Euthanasia wife was worried about will

A woman accused of murdering her de facto husband with a popular euthanasia drug told his daughter she did not want to lose her share of the estate to the "greedy children", a Sydney court has been told.

Graeme Wylie, 71, died from an overdose of the barbiturate drug Nembutal at his northern Sydney home in March 2006.

The former Qantas pilot had been suffering from advanced Alzheimer's disease and had unsuccessfully sought an assisted suicide from Swiss euthanasia organisation Dignitas in December 2005.

His partner of 18 years, Shirley Justins, 59, is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court for his murder.

Family friend Caren Jenning, 75, is also being tried as an accessary, for allegedly supplying the Nembutal.

The retired schoolteacher denies supplying the nembutal or being involved in Mr Wylie's death.

Mr Wylie's daughter Nicola Dumbrell on Monday told the jury her father's condition had deteriorated markedly by the end of 2005.

He was unable to remember her name or converse, Ms Dumbrell said.

At a dinner after her father's diagnosis with Alzheimer's in March 2003, Justins had remarked that some people were so badly affected by the illness that they would answer the front door in the nude, Ms Dumbrell said.

"Dad glared at her and said something like: `If it ever came to that I would shoot myself'," she told the court.

However, she said, that was the only time Mr Wylie had talked to her about suicide.

She said Justins later asked her to write a letter in support of his Dignitas application.

But when, Ms Dumbrell said, on reading the paperwork she remarked Dignitas did not accept Alzheimer's sufferers, Jenning suggested she should not worry.

"(Jenning) just brushed her hands in the air and said: `Oh it will be all right', and that (euthanasia advocate) Dr Phillip Nitschke would be coming to assess my father," she said.

While the family was waiting for a response from Dignitas, Ms Dumbrell said, she discussed her father's will with Justins.

"She said ... that there was a will in an envelope (in the house) and that it was a third, a third, a third, to my sister, her and myself," she said.

When she joked that her father, who loved wildlife, might have left his assets to "the possums or the cats", Ms Dumbrell said Justins gave her a "horrified" look.

"I said to her something like: `I wouldn't like to see you thrown out of the house to the possums' and she replied: `Nor to the greedy children'."

The jury last week was told that Justins arranged for Mr Wylie to draw up a new will just one week before he died, leaving her all but $200,000 of his $2.4 million estate.

Ms Dumbrell said that after Dignitas knocked her father back, Justins had said: "Oh, there are other ways".

Ms Dumbrell said Justins also had a "screaming match" with her sister Tania after the rejection, blaming her for "swaying" Dr Nitschke about their father's cognitive abilities.

Six weeks before his death, Ms Dumbrell said, Mr Wylie fell in his basement workshop and spent two weeks in hospital.

After the fall, she asked Justins whether they should speak to a social worker about the accident and Mr Wylie's possibly "suicidal tendencies".

"She said: `No, it wasn't suicide, it was a fall and everything would be all right when he got home'," Ms Dumbrell told the court.

She said her father had not spoken to her about suicide or anything to do with suicide after he was discharged from hospital.

Mr Wylie also never mentioned his will, she said.

"I had very low expectations of what he could do or say," Ms Dumbrell said.

The trial continues before Justice Roderick Howie.