Love child gets fortune
NZPA-PA London A three-year-old illegitimate boy living with his mother on social security has inherited more than £ 750,000 ($1.7 million). This settles a legal row over who would get the cash from the estate of the boy’s father, the seventh Earl of Craven. Lord Craven shot himself in October 1983. He was 26. His family challenged the right of his love-child, Tommy Craven, to inherit. Tommy and his mother, Anne Nicholson, aged 32, lived in a tiny two-bed-roomed flat after an allowance was stopped on Lord Craven’s death. She and the motor-cycle-loving Rt Hon. Thomas Robert Douglas had lived on the family estate until they split up. His mother, the Countess of Craven, challenged Tommy’s right to inherit and demanded blood tests on him. There was no will for the earl’s personal fortune. Tommy could not inherit the family fortune of more than £4 million ($7.2 million) or the title because it could only go to a legitimate heir. Ms Nicolson, said today: “I know it sounds like a lot of money, but by the time the tax man gets through it will be reduced to something like £250,000 ($563,000). “Tom never had a lot of happiness from his money and I hope that I will be able to bring his son up in a way that will teach him to use it wisely and let him reap the benefits of it.” Lord Craven inherited the estates at the age of eight after his father fell to the so-called Curse of the Cravens. According to legend, the curse doomed all Craven males to die before their mothers and was placed on the family by a serving girl allegedly made pregnant by an ancestor. Several male Cravens have died young.
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Press, 25 February 1985, Page 6
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293Love child gets fortune Press, 25 February 1985, Page 6
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