On the Trust trail

Attorneys will examine records of the
Lee S. Jones Educational Trust this week

Attorneys of the Wilson Law Firm will meet later this week with a representative of a Louisville investment firm regarding the Lee S. Jones Educational Trust.
Eddyville benefactor Lee Seldon Jones established the trust in 1987 to provide college scholarships for deserving Lyon County High School graduates. At Jones’ death in 1990, his longtime secretary, Lucy Jane Murphy, became the trustee. Under terms of Jones’ will, the trusteeship was to transfer to the Lyon County School Superintendent at Murphy’s death.
Murphy died last July, but her death didn’t become known here until September.
Shortly thereafter, Richard Howard Schuster, the Louisville attorney handling her estate, said the trust was worth $739,000 and was in the hands of Morgan Keegan & Co. in Louisville.
On Friday, Schuster he told the Herald Ledger he had mailed the trust records to Allen Wilson a few days earlier.
However, Marvin Wilson, said the records his office received, were “nothing like the records we need.”
“We told them we needed the records back to the trust’s inception,” Wilson said, noting he was referred to Morgan Keegan. “We learned (Morgan Keegan) only had records back four or five years.”
The Wilson Law Firm represents the school system, and its attorneys have been working toward transferring the trusteeship since shortly after learning Murphy had died.
An inventory of Murphy’s estate showing $1,877,737.01 was filed in Jefferson District Court late last month. Five tracts of land including a 57.55-acre tract and a 15-acre tract are still listed as owned by the Lee S. Jones Estate. Through the years, tax statements have been sent to Murphy’s Louisville address.
In his handwritten will, Jones’ left his estate to Murphy until her death, “and upon that event, the remainder of my estate shall vest in the Lee S. Jones Educational Trust, Eddyville, Lyon County, Ky. to be credited to the principal fund of that trust, all of which be invested and reinvested in U.S. bonds forever ...”
At the meeting this week, Wilson said attorneys will see what’s in the records, what’s in the trust and where it came from to Morgan Keegan.