By Sue Montgomery

Arturo Gatti said he needed help to stop drinking because he loved his wife, Amanda Rodrigues, and their son, the child's babysitter told Quebec Superior Court.

During hearings to determine who should inherit the late boxer's estate, Victoria Purchio said she often smelled alcohol on Gatti's breath but never saw the couple fighting.

"Amanda didn't tell me about her problems with her husband, but said, 'I don't know what to do. He drinks and gets into trouble,' " Purchio said.

The Gatti family claims Rodrigues pressured her husband into signing a will in June 2009 that left everything to her.

They say another will, from 2007, that leaves the estate to Gatti's mother, younger brother and daughter from a previous relationship should be honoured. But no one has a signed copy of the document.

Purchio said that after Gatti's death in July 2009 in Brazil, the boxer's brother, Fabrizio, asked the babysitter to testify against Rodrigues and say she was drunk when she picked up Junior, now 3 years old.

"I said, 'Sorry, I can't do that,' " she told the court. "I said, 'She's a good mother and I never smelled liquor on her, but I did on your brother.' "

Outside the courtroom, Purchio said she found the bitter legal battle between the two sides sad.

"Oh my stars, it's heartbreaking for a family to try to destroy a young girl with a baby."

Gatti was found dead in the couple's vacation apartment. After questioning Rodrigues, Brazilian authorities concluded it was a suicide. But an independent investigation in the United States concluded this month that the boxer was strangled.

Erika Rivera, with whom Gatti had a daughter, has filed a wrongfuldeath suit in New Jersey, alleging that Rodrigues killed or conspired to kill her husband.

Quebec Court Justice Claudine Roy would not allow Rodrigues to be questioned Friday by Gatti's lawyer about what happened the night Gatti died.

She ruled the plaintiffs allege only that Rodrigues "behaved seriously reprehensibly" toward her husband, and said at the beginning of the trial they wouldn't raise anything regarding the circumstances of the death.

Neither the Brazilian investigators' report nor the latest Quebec coroner's report, which is not yet completed, has been entered as evidence, she said.

Sue Montgomery is a reporter for the Montreal Gazette.