MONTREAL - A civil dispute over the estate of boxer Arturo Gatti has taken a dramatic twist, with the testimony shifting to the night he was found dead in a Brazilian resort town.

His widow told a courtroom Thursday that a drunken Gatti hit her in public hours before he was found dead.

She says they parted ways during their dispute.

She says that Brazilian police later told her that Gatti then wound up in a brawl against 20 men in a town square.

Amanda Rodrigues says police told her that the bloody head wound Gatti had the night he died was not related to his death -- but happened because an angry mob pelted him with rocks and even bicycles.

She says that later, when they met up at the resort, Gatti was bleeding and holding their infant son. That's where the questions stopped today as Rodrigues' lawyer argued that Gatti's death has nothing to do with their Quebec civil trial over his $3.4 million estate.

He is seeking to limit the kind of questions that can be asked surrounding the events of that night in July 2009.

Rodrigues' lawyer says that her testimony in a Montreal courtroom could be used against her in a wrongful-death case launched in New Jersey.

But Gatti family lawyer Carmine Mercadante says he wants to know what happened that night -- he says it speaks to Rodrigues' credibility.

Mercadante says it is his right to ask questions about this final fight between the couple, the same way other disputes between the couple have come up during the trial.

Justice Claudine Roy is to weigh the arguments and rule tomorrow morning.

The Gatti family and Rodrigues have been at odds since the boxer's 2009 death at that Brazilian resort.

The boxer's family does not accept the conclusion of Brazilian authorities that he committed suicide. And they reject the legitimacy of a will, signed just weeks before his death, that left everything to Rodrigues.

The Gatti family has said their preference is that the fortune be split equally between Gatti's child with Rodrigues and his child from a previous relationship.

They say they don't want any of the money for themselves but contend that a 2007 will that leaves everything to Gatti's mother and daughter from a previous relationship is valid.

They have not been able to produce a signed copy of that will.