Heather Mills McCartney locked out of Paul's home

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. File picture / Reuters

LONDON - Heather Mills McCartney laughed off being locked out of estranged husband Paul McCartney's London home, her spokesman said today, but her divorce battle with the former Beatle appears to be turning sour.

Yesterday, police were called to McCartney's London residence when Mills' security guard climbed over the wall of his premises wall to let her in. The locks on the gates had been changed.

"One of the security people inside called the police," Mills' spokesman said. "They turned up and she went off for a drive around the block with the kid."

Mills had arrived at the home with her two-year-old daughter Beatrice, the couple's only child.

"She was laughing about it," Phil Hall said, when asked about newspaper reports that Mills was angry at being locked out.

But he confirmed that McCartney had frozen their joint bank account and had sent a "legal letter" to his wife to complain after three bottles of cleaning fluid were taken from his Sussex home to clean Mills' nearby office.

McCartney's spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Although the couple described their separation as amicable when it was announced in May, McCartney cited her "unreasonable behaviour" in divorce papers and Mills responded by vowing to file counter-claims in Britain and the United States.

Lawyers believe McCartney could lose up to one quarter of his wealth, estimated at £825 million, as a result of a divorce.

The couple married in 2002 having met in 1999 at a charity event a year after the death from breast cancer of McCartney's first wife Linda.

Mills has been the target of lurid allegations in tabloids since separating from McCartney, but he has strongly denied she married him for his money, saying in May there was "not an ounce of truth in this".

- REUTERS