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

DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992                   TAG: 9203010177
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

COURT RULES ON RESCUE SQUAD GIFT

The Virginia Supreme Court settled a fractious dispute between two Westmoreland County volunteer rescue squads, ruling an elderly woman meant to leave her life's savings to just one of the units.

The state's high court said Friday the 105-year-old woman's bequest of $600,000 will go to the Westmoreland County Rescue Squad.

Martha Virginia Sanford's handwritten will directs that her money go to "the Rescue Squad, Hague, Westmoreland County, Va." It has been the subject of dispute since her death in 1990.

Volunteers at the Westmoreland Rescue Squad, the only rescue unit in the eastern half of the county when she wrote the will in 1979, argued that the money was theirs and theirs alone.

But volunteers at the Montross Rescue Squad, formed a year before her death to serve the central part of the county, said they should get a cut of the cash.

But the Supreme Court justices said "the language of the will clearly establishes" that Sanford didn't intend the money be split.

by CNB