City lawyer fights father, 75, she doted on until he started romance with her nanny, 28
Pensioner in court battle over homes and jewellery denies ‘axe threat’
A LAWYER said to have treated her elderly father “like a God” until she discovered he was sleeping with her 28-year-old au pair is now fighting him in court over an international property portfolio and her late mother’ s £1 million jewellery collection.
Millionaire City solicitor Audra Wamsteker, 49, fell out with her father Paul David, 75, when she found out about his “unthinkably repugnant” relationship with Jobeth Daguio, the live-in nanny to her two children, Central London county court heard.
The court was told that Mrs Wamsteker, a former Ernst & Young lawyer of Canary Wharf, found out her father had “formed an attachment” to the nanny after his wife’s death in 2008. Mr David and Ms Daguio married in 2013 and now have two children.
Mr David, a lawyer from Stratford, and his daughter are contesting ownership of a London flat, a house in Surrey, money from the sale of four properties in the US and 23 items of jewellery that belonged to her mother.
In court, Mr David denied a claim that the dispute led him to threaten his daughter’s husband, investment director Adrianus Wamsteker, 52, with an axe, but said: “I dislike him. I don’t deny it, I don’t like him.”
He is arguing that a £740,000 bungalow in Worcester Park and a £275,000 flat in West Ham are his, despite being in his daughter’s name, because he paid the deposits on both and contributed to the mortgages.
Mr David also wants £150,000 in rent after claiming he has been excluded from the properties since 2013, and says he is owed money from the sale of four homes in Florida which he paid for. He also wants his daughter to return the jewellery.
Mrs Wamsteker denies her father ever owned any of the properties and believes the jewellery was a gift.
Her barrister, Desmond Kilcoyne, said Mr David had implicitly admitted the real ownership of the jewellery in an email, when he wrote: “It’s no use keeping something you’ve been given by someone you hate so bitterly.”
Mr David said he gave Mrs Wamsteker only two items of jewellery. He also said his daughter had once said: “Mummy made me swear that I’d look after you to your dying day.”
Mr Kilcoyne agreed there used to be a “very close bond” between them, adding: “You said your daughter thinks of you like a God.” But he added: “There’s an aspect of the rela- tionship where she has felt unable to say no to you... you felt entitled to ask her for money.” Denying the claim and insisting he loves his daughter, Mr David replied: “She makes me look like some sort of gangster... I look like a horrible man standing here.”
The hearing continues.
She makes me look like some sort of gangster… I look like a horrible man standing here
Paul David on his daughter Audra Wamsteker