£320,000 WILL CASE

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 9817, 22 February 1936, Page 18 (Supplement)

£320,000 WILL CASE

76—year—old Woman’s “Infatuation.” Man Dancer Loses Claim.

By the decision of the Monaco Appeal Court the other day the young Chilian dancer, Senor Della Cuadra, loses a fortune of '£320,000 left to him under the will of Mine. Marie Leroy, a wealthy widow, who died in 1932. The Court ruled that the entire estate is to go to the Belgian relatives of Mme. Leroy, and Senor Della Cuadra gets nothing at all. This decision, which marks the end of protracted litigation over the will, reverses the decision of the Monaoo Tribunal last January, which declared the will to be valid and cancelled an order for sequestration. Della Cuadra must thus abandon the magnificent blue and white Riviera villa, known as the Villa Fleur de Lys, which was included in the estate. The claim of the Englishman, Mr Leroy Lewis, of London, who was among the contestants of the will, falied on the ground that Mme. Leroy was never legally married. Much of her fortune came from an American, Mr Jacob Richard Leroy, with whom she had lived for 30 years, and who predeceased her. The claim of an Italian family also failed on similar grounds.

11 Undue Influence/* Mme. Leroy, a septuagenarian, died in October, 1932. The parties contesting her bequest of her fortune to the Chilean declared that her infatuation made her mentally incapable, and that the Chilean used undue influence. Durinlc the hearing of the appeal Maitre Jaspar, for the Belgian relatives, made a bitter attaok upon Senor Della Cuadra, describing him as "a masculine version of Ninon de L’Enolos,” the historically famous oourtesan, and contending that the Chilean dancer had no right to the Leroy fortune, because it was a foolish bequest made in a moment of weakness. “ You cannot tell me,” Maitre Jaspar contended in court, “that a 76-year-old woman who believed herself about to give birth to five kittens — as has been shown by the evidence—■ was sane.” Maitre Masse, for Senor Della Cuadra, retorted, however, that his olient was a model young man, of whom any mother might be proud. The gay life of Riviera pleasureseekers was laid bare in all its gilded hollowness during the course of the hearings.—Messages from Reuter and British United Press.