Businessman Andre Curtis’s family was “robbed from Peter to pay Paul” to fund their apparently lavish lifestyle, according to his ex-wife.Laquita Zuill told a jury Mr Curtis owed money to herself, his mother and his daughter at the time he allegedly committed theft.Mr Curtis is charged with stealing $141,826 that client Andrew Smith paid him to renovate his Flatts home between December, 2006 and February, 2007.Mr Smith told the jury on Friday that he gave Mr Curtis $271,000 in advance for the project, but it was done to a poor standard and left unfinished.Prosecutor Kirsty-Anne Kiellor has alleged that the account of Mr Curtis’s company, Vision Construction, only had $61 in it before the payment came in from Mr Smith in December, 2006.She said Mr Curtis transferred $157,000 of it into the account of his then-wife, Laquita Zuill, and told her what to do with the funds.According to Ms Kiellor, and evidence given by Ms Zuill yesterday, the money went on personal transactions that had nothing to do with the Smith project.Talking the jury through sums that went out of her bank account, Ms Zuill said one illustrated a repayment Mr Curtis made on a loan from his daughter’s scholarship fund.Another transfer, totalling more than $5,000, was the outstanding balance he owed on the daughter’s university fees.A $20,000 transfer went to Mr Curtis’s mother, Madree Curtis.“It’s my understanding that Andre borrowed money from his mother and this was the last repayment,” explained Ms Zuill, who said the total loan was around $170,000 and dated back some five years.She added that she also loaned her husband money from her pension fund and paid for his cellphone and dentist bills.Ms Kiellor asked how she would describe the state of her family finances at the time the transactions were happening in December, 2006.“Mismanaged,” replied Ms Zuill, who said their income versus expenditure did not always match up.Quizzed by the prosecutor about the family lifestyle at that time, Ms Zuill said: “On the outside, you would say it probably looked lavish, but on the inside it was stressful, knowing we didn’t have what we needed and robbing from Peter to pay Paul. That’s stressful.”Ms Zuill said she and her husband were separated by the time he allegedly began to commit another theft of money, this time from the Bermuda Government.Mr Curtis, from Warwick, denies theft and false accounting, and the case continues.