Janice Brooks
From:
Pleasant Gap Pa
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Posted 23 Jul 2004 2:14 pm |
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By Stephanie M. Mangino
The Winchester Star
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It looks like a three-year estate battle between Patsy Cline’s brother and sister is finally winding down.
In May, Winchester Circuit Court Judge John E. Wetsel Jr. made it clear that Cline’s siblings — Sylvia M. Wilt and Samuel L. Hensley — needed to split the remains of their mother’s estate, which includes a slew of Cline items.
That division occurred June 8, but neither side had taken their selections home because they refused to sign a release from estate administrator Charles R. Alton.
Wetsel clarified the legal language in the release documents Thursday, and said if Wilt and Hensley do not sign by Aug. 2, the items they would have received would be sold.
Wetsel then called for the case to return to court on Aug. 19. He advised Alton to bring a draft accounting of the estate, including a plan for the distribution of money.
“I think we’re progressing,” Wetsel said on Thursday, as he presided over a hearing dealing with the distribution of items in the estate of Cline’s mother, Hilda V. Hensley.
Hensley died in December 1998, 35 years after her daughter perished in a March 5, 1963, airplane crash. Cline’s voice propelled a host of top pop and country music hits, including “Crazy” and “Walkin’ After Midnight.”
Cline was raised primarily in Winchester, and her mother died here.
Cline’s brother and sister have been in court battling over their mother’s estate since 2001.
A November 2003 court-ordered sale of Cline items at Christie’s auction house in New York grossed more than $120,000.
If the documents are available for review well before Aug. 19, the estate could be wrapped up that day, according to Wilt’s attorney, Philip S. Griffin II.
When the estate wrangling ends, so will a lawsuit filed by Hensley against his sister.
The suit contends Wilt mishandled and intentionally destroyed Cline items in her mother’s estate. A 2002 Winchester Circuit Court jury did not agree.
The 2002 trial did not cover all the items listed in Hensley’s suit. However, Hensley’s attorney, Stephen L. Pettler Jr., assured the court, “We’re intending to drop the suit as soon as the [estate] distribution is made.”
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