A CURIOUS WILL

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19961, 20 November 1934, Page 8

A CURIOUS WILL

MILLIONAIRE AND HIS FAMILY FINANCIAL AID WITHHELD The millionaire motor-car and aeroplane designer, Montague Stanley Napier, who died in January 1931. was determined that his four children should make their own way in life unaided by his money. Now ,the mother of those children has defied the deadhand dictates of her husband, and provided the help he refused. Mr Napier left £1.243,000. He bequeathed £IO,OOO and properties to Norah Mary Fryer, £3OOO to each of two secretaries and annuities of not more than £IOOO to his children, to begin on their mother’s death. Mrs Napier, after being left unprovided for. resorted to litigation, and obtained a settlement securing her £20.000 and an income of £3OOO a year for life out of her dead husband’s estate. The children receive nothing of their father’s fortune until their mother dies, when three of them will inherit £IOOO a year each. The will was designed to make the children fend for themselves, but Mrs Napier held other views. The youngest son, Carill. now aged 26, was at the time of his father’s death an engine -tester in a workshop naer Brighton. To-day. thanks to his mother’s financial aid, he is a director and works manager of an aircraft company. Within three years he has risen from an employee to an employer of nearly 200 men. Carill wanted £SOOO with which to open the door and seize the opportunity that was knocking on it. His mother financed him without hesitation and without imposing a single condition. Another son, Selwyn Napier, aged 30, is progressing as a salesman in the Bond Street offices of a motor-car company. He will shortly be married, and the wedding day has been brought nearer as the result of his mother’s unstinting help. Then there are two daughters. Miss Phyllis Napier is no longer obliged to work for a living in a Kensington lingerie shop, but helps to run the family’s new home at Putney, S.W. Miss Margaret Napier has no longer to take fees for music lessons, but is able, with the security offered by her mother, to extend her own music studies. The millionaire’s widow described her own life as being “happier than it has been for many years.” “I regard it as my duty to help my children,” she said. “The boys are endowed with far too much ambition and initiative to take advantage of my improved position. But when I saw that a grand opportunity was being denied my boy Carill for want of a few thousand pounds, I insisted on his accepting the money as a gift. “That was less than a year ago, and already he has justified my confidence in him. Go to Yorkshire and ask anybody in Brough about him. Carill has inherited his father’s mathematical genius. He is going to do great things. How glad lam that I am able to help him!” Selwyn then took up his tale of happiness. “Carill is the brainy one of the family,” he said. “My father drew up twenty wills during his lifetime. His idea of making us find our own independence without his help was not expressed in the early wills. But my father’s character underwent a sudden change. When his illness came on, a doctor informed him that he had not long to live. That death sentence had a profound effect on my father’s mind.”