VINCENT BE GOOD!

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 16 April 1932, Page 4

VINCENT BE GOOD!

BEHAVIOUR TEST IN WILL WASHINGTON, 6th April. ,| Vincent Kerens will have to make another try for the £400,000 prize which depends upon his convincing a Court he has been sober, and behaved himself for five years. The Supreme Court refused to review the decision of a Circuit Court of Appeals that the sou of Richard C. Kerens, of St. Louis, former Ambassador to Austria-Hungary, had not conducted himself properly for five years. The father had tried to “reform!’, his son during his lifetime, and, his efforts failing, he. left a provision in his will which said that Vincent should get his £400,000 share in the estate if he could convince the trustee he had “passed five consecutive years of continued sobriety and good behaviour.” Vincent finally succeeded in convincing the trustee, the St. Tonis Union Trust Company, that lie had been good from 1923 to 1928. hut his sisters, Mrs Gladys Kerens Colket and Mrs Madeline Kerens Kcnna, were not convinced.

They took the case to the Courts, and the Appellate Court said it was evident the trustee had made no attempt to investigate charges against Kerens and had not taken into account- attempts lie made in tile past to deceive the trustee and get the money. Mr Kerens secured a divorce from his first wife, Jane Kerens, in 1924, and in about a. week married Mrs Mae Linn, of Dallas, Texas. The Circuit Court said that during about a year and a half of the period when Kerens was supposed to have been on his good behaviour he was living with Mrs Linn, although* at that time lie was not divorced. The Supreme Court gave final authority to the Circuit Court’s decision by refusing to review the case.