NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Melanie McGuire, the fertility clinic nurse standing trial for the murder and dismemberment of her husband, opted not to testify in her own defense Thursday.

"I wish to remain silent," the 34-year-old informed a judge shortly after the final witness in her six-week trial left the courtroom.

For the past week, her lawyers have said that McGuire was still in the process of deciding whether to take the stand to answer charges that she shot her husband, William, to death in 2004.

Her decision made, jurors will hear closing arguments and begin deliberating first-degree murder and other charges Monday.

State Superior Court Judge Frederick DeVesa asked McGuire a series of legally proscribed questions outside the presence of the jury to determine if her decision was voluntary. Standing beside one of her attorneys, McGuire replied to each of the judge's questions about whether she understood the consequences of not testifying with a soft "yes."

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The mother of two faces a possible life sentence if convicted. She has acknowledged having an affair with her boss, a physician, but maintains she does not know how her husband was killed.

Her decision not to testify may be tied to the fact that jurors have heard her account of the events surrounding his death on multiple occasions throughout the trial. Prosecutors played a recording of a family court hearing in which McGuire told a judge her husband left her after a violent fight. In wiretaps introduced as evidence, she made similar statements to her lover and a friend. A detective relayed an interview in which the defendant said she never saw her husband alive after the fight.

Her defense concluded its four-day case Thursday with brief testimony from the victim's ex-wife. The defense had hoped that Marcie Paulk, who was married to William McGuire, her high school classmate, from 1986 to 1994, would be permitted to describe a union that was marred by violence and came to a sudden end when the victim walked out on his wife.

McGuire's lawyers argued in court papers that the victim's behavior in his first marriage supported the defendant's claims that, shortly before his death, her husband struck her and then said he was leaving her and their sons.

DeVesa, however, ruled that such testimony was irrelevant to the murder and allowed Paulk to testify only about an e-mail she received from William McGuire the year he was killed.

She said the e-mail was sent through a high school alumni site.

"I got an e-mail from Classmates.com stating, kind of, 'I'm sorry for what I've done to you and, you know, please contact me,'" she testified.

The judge immediately cut Paulk off and told jurors to ignore what she had said about the contents of the e-mail.

Paulk, who had a new husband and children, said she never wrote back to William McGuire.

The reference to Classmates.com is important to defense attempts to explain suspicious Internet searches on the McGuires' home computer. Someone visited the Classmates.com Web site about 15 minutes after the computer was used to search for the phrase "how to find chloroform." The defense has said the victim's use of the alumni site proves he was the one searching for the anesthetic, not his wife.