£2,000,000 FORTUNE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23851, 30 December 1940, Page 8

£2,000,000 FORTUNE

DISPOSAL DELAYED HEIR MISSING IN FRANCE LONDON, Dec. 28 The disposal of nearly £'2,000,000 hangs fire pending discovery of whether Lieutenant the Hon. Christopher Fulness, of the Welsh Guards, is alive or dead. The money is from the estate of his father, Viscount Furncss, who died in a French villa at Cap Ferrat, in October, and left £4.587,412 (Australian), on which £2,.'522,500 was paid in death duty. Viscount Furncss had bequeathed seven-eighths of the estate on trust to his son Christopher and any of his children, but Christopher was unmarried. He accompanied the Guards to France in 1935) and was wounded on May 23, while heading his platoon against the Germans. He refused to go to hospital and his wounds were dressed on the field. He again led his platoon the next day, after which he was not seen. He may be dead or a prisoner of war, or a refugee in some farmhouse in France. If search justifies the presumption of death, the whole estate, instead of oneeighth. will pass to the 11 years old son, William Anthony, by Viscount Furncss' second wife, Mrs, Thelma Converse, an American, who divorced him in 1933. Viscount Furncss married for a third time the same year an Australian, Mrs. Fnid Cavendish, widow of BrigadierGeneral F. W. L. Cavendish. He left, her £12.250, his town house in St. .Tames' Street, and an additional £'20.000 to purchase a villa at Cap Ferrat. It is understood that the present viscountess is still resident in France, to which, while the war lasts, the cash legacy cannot be remitted.