TRUSTEE'S DEBT AT ISSUE IN SUIT HEIRS CRY FOUL OVER HIS MANEUVER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 25, 1992                   TAG: 9202250205
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT                                LENGTH: Medium
TRUSTEE'S DEBT AT ISSUE IN SUIT HEIRS CRY FOUL OVER HIS MANEUVER
Funeral director Kevin P. Flora is trying to use a legal loophole to get out of repaying a $120,000 debt he owes to a dead man's trust fund.
Flora may succeed because - in addition to being a debtor to the fund - he supervises the account as its trustee.
But the dead man's children are crying foul.
They have filed a motion in Franklin County Circuit Court to block Flora from erasing his personal debt.
Flora, who is vice president of Flora Funeral Service, referred all questions Monday to his attorney.
The dispute involves the estate of Laurence G. Mayne, who died in December.
Mayne lived alone after his two children moved away and his wife died.
He was befriended by Flora, who became something of a "surrogate child" to the old man, according to Eric Ferguson, Flora's attorney.
In 1988, Mayne sold his Boones Mill home to Flora under a generous self-financing arrangement. Flora borrowed $120,000, but was required to pay Mayne only $300 a month, court papers show.
In January 1991, Mayne put all his assets and property into a self-declaration trust designed to provide income to his two children and one grandson well into the 20th century. He appointed Flora as trustee.
Assets included the $120,000 mortgage on Flora's house and, later, a second mortgage valued at $104,663, court papers show.
As trustee, Flora is trying to invoke a provision under which the $120,000 mortgage would be forgiven if Mayne were married at the time of his death and if his wife died or remarried.
Paul M. Black, a Roanoke attorney representing Mayne's children, said that Flora's interpretation does not wash because Mayne was not married at the time of his death.
In any event, Mayne never signed the deed of trust that contains the purported forgiveness provision, Black said.
Black has asked Circuit Judge B.A. Davis III to rule on Flora's interpretation of the mortgage. No hearing date has been set.
Black represents Martha Mayne of Mesa, Ariz., and John Laurence Mayne of Pinckney, Mich.
Meanwhile, Ferguson said Flora was considering stepping down as trustee of Mayne's fund or as executor of his will because of a potential conflict of interest.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB