The scene of Guma Aguiar's life before his disappearance at sea Tuesday night launched a strange soap opera, with his wife and mother battling over his estate, according to court documents and a lawyer for Aguiar's mother.
Richard Baron, an attorney for mother Ellen Aguiar, told ABCNews.com that Jaime Aguiar had asked her husband for a divorce just before he set out to sea. Since the disappearance, court filings from the mother indicate that her son may be in a state of psychosis or possibly dead. The lawyer's story frames the disappearance as a despondent reaction to the request for divorce.
"I'm of the belief that that's what pushed him over the deep end," said Mom. According to court records, Guma filed for divorce from Jaime in July 2011 but it was never finalized.
Filings this week, according to reports, show that Jaime has asked the chairman of the board of a Jerusalem basketball team owned by her husband to freeze its players' salaries. Meanwhile, Ellen says that her daughter-in-law will squander the estate and is moving to obtain control of the assets.
The Failed Messiah blog reports that Jaime is also suing him over a prenup agreement that limits her take to $500,000 in the event of a divorce. His fortune is estimated at $100 million. She's also made domestic-violence claims against him.
A lawyer for Jaime told Bob Norman that Ellen is behaving erratically: "Her behavior is bizarre to the extreme, including filing papers while the divers are still looking for the body of her son."
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