The wife of former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm said she received $1.2 million (€876,000) in cash from her husband from 2008 because the banking crisis had left him "stressed out", and she didn't know "if he would drop dead of a heart attack."

Testifying on the fifth day of Mr Drumm's bankruptcy trial in Boston, Lorraine Drumm told a Massachusetts court that in the autumn of 2008 their marriage was going through "a really, really tough time" and that she was "imagining life without him" and wanted to make provisions for her and her two daughters. "He was working all the hours God sent him," she said.

“He was never at home, and probably for two years prior to that I had pretty much been at home raising my girls on my own and it just took its toll, as these things do. A lot of things just collided together.”

Heart attack

Mrs Drumm told the court she didn’t know if their marriage would survive the financial crisis. “I didn’t know if he would drop dead of a heart attack because that’s what it looked like most days.”

The bank, now Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, and Mr Drumm's bankruptcy trustee are seeking to deny him a discharge from bankruptcy and a fresh financial start, claiming he defrauded creditors by transferring cash to his wife.

Mrs Drumm said she knew financial markets were in turmoil in late 2008 and that the share price of the bank had collapsed. Asked by the bank's attorney Ken Leonetti if she knew the couple's net worth was tied up in Anglo shares, she said: "That I didn't think about so much."

Mrs Drumm said she didn’t know her husband owed the bank €8 million. She knew Anglo “mandated” directors to buy shares “but I never knew how much.”

Mrs Drumm, who has been married to Mr Drumm for 23 years, said she wanted money “that I could control myself”.

Asked if she considered Mr Drumm’s creditors when she received the cash transfers, she said: “I wasn’t thinking about Mr Drumm’s creditors – I was thinking about me, my two children and how my marriage was falling apart.”