Person Page - 762

RICH MANUFACTURER DIVORCED FROM WIFE
     MARINETTE, Wis., April 30.--Marshall B. Lloyd, wealthy manufacturer and former mayor of Menominee, Mich., was granted a divorce from his wife by Judge O'Brien of the circuit court Wednesday. It was a default case, Mr. Lloyd claiming that his wife deserted him three years ago. She made no appearance. Mr. Lloyd recently sold his patent fibre furniture machine to English capitalists for $1,500,000. Some years ago he sold a patent for making seamless steel tubing for a consideration in the millions.⁷

Suit For $1,000,000 Will Test Validity Of Divorce
     Menominee, Mich. (AP) --A wife's half share in the estate of the man to whom she was married through the struggling years of his career to be cast aside when he achieved success and wealth was the claim of Margaret Isadora Lloyd of Los Angeles, California against the estate of Marshall Burns Lloyd, of Menominee.
     Divorced April 27, 1920 on grounds of desertion, the Los Angeles woman sought to establish her claim to $1,000,000 of the estate of the inventor, manufacturer, and philanthropist by attacking the validity of the divorce. This she did, in a chancery hearing before. Circuit Judge Frank Bell, in circuit court here May 7 and 8, her suit being contested by Lloyd's third wife, Mrs. Henrietta Lloyd, and other heirs and executors , who contended that the plaintiff was debarred from starting suit by the lapse of eight years and maintained the divorce was legal.
     Lloyd, over whose $2,000,000 fortune the legal battle was waged by an imposing array of counsel, died in August 1927. Inventor of a score of devices, he achieved his greatest fame and wealth through the Lloyd loom which revolutionized the weaving business which theretofore had been done by hand, and earned for him the title of "baby carriage king" through the manufacture of baby carriages through the new process in his Menominee plant which he later sold.
     Endowed City
     His philanthropy was largely confined to Menominee where he came in 1900 as a struggling inventor, and upon his death was found he left to the city the bulk of his fortune for a clinic to care for the physical ills of its residents. His will made no mention of his second wife, cut off with a dollar, his estranged adopted son, and left his third wife, Mrs. Henrietta Lloyd, $300,000 through an ante nuptial agreement.
     A large department store, motion picture theater and community building stand as monuments to his generosity.
     But in bringing the suit, Mrs. Margaret Lloyd claimed that the generosity was confined to the community, Her counsel pictured her as having been wife and helper to Marshall Burns Lloyd for 16 years, to be ordered from their beautiful Menominee home and then divorced illegally without being notified and finally offered a settlement of her dower rights for $1 which she refused.
     Lloyd whose first wife, Emma Croskill Lloyd had divorced him in Minneapolis where he formerly lived, obtained a decree from Judge P. H. O'Brien, April 27, 20, charging desertion.
     Charged Secrete (sic) Love Affair
     Her attorneys contended that she did not desert but was sent away from home, two years before Lloyd sued for divorce. An impasse had been reached she contended, when she discovered an affair Lloyd is alleged to have had with a stenographer in the plants.
     The divorce was attacked on the grounds Mrs. Lloyd was not properly served with notice of the suit, and counsel further contended that the decree was void for want of jurisdiction and for failure to have a date on the order for publication. A fraud was perpetrated upon the court by Lloyd, the woman's counsel suggested, when he asked for a divorce charging desertion.
     The executors, Mrs. Henrietta Lloyd, the Detroit Trust company and Isaac B. Lipson, Chicago attorney and the heirs fought the suit on several grounds. They contended she was stopped from contesting the validity of the divorce by the lapse of eight years, and that the divorce was not invalidated by any error in the record if there were any.
     The defense had charged in its answer that Mrs. Lloyd's departure from Menominee was because of her misconduct, but this allegation was ordered expunged when no proof was offered. Mrs. Margaret Lloyd who has been living with relatives in Los Angeles was the principal witness for her side. Mrs. Henrietta Lloyd, who married the inventor April 11, 1922 in New York City, after a brief courtship following their meeting at Palm Beach where she managed a gift shop, testified briefly.⁸

COURT GIVES LLOYD'S FIRST WIFE 25,000
     Judge Refuses Claim Of Estranged Widow Who Asked Million Dollars
     Menominee, Mich., June 29. (JP) An appeal from the decision of Judge Frank Bell, handed down Thursday awarding her $25,000 in lieu of alimony after she had sued for a $1.000, 000 in the estate of Marshall B. Lloyd, was asked by Mrs. Margaret Isadora Lloyd in a message to her attorneys. She requested that the appeal be taken to the Michigan supreme court.
     Menominee. Mich., June 29. — (AP) — Instead of the million dollars she sought, Margaret Isadora Lloyd, divorced wife of the late Marshall B. Lloyd, wealthy Menominee manufacturer, today could claim only $25,000 from his estate. That sum was allowed her in lieu of alimony in a decision handed down by Circuit Judge Frank Bell.
     The judge in his decision upheld Lloyd's divorce from her on grounds ot desertion, declined to recognize her claim that she was Lloyd's legal wife because she said she had not deserted him but had been sent away, and gave her interest on the $25,000 from the time she filed her claim last September. She had sought the million as the widow's share of the Lloyd estate.
     Whether an appeal will be taken from the award rests largely with Michael J. Doyle, chief counsel for Mrs. Lloyd. He is ill in a hospital and will not be shown the decision for several weeks.
     As far as the defense is concerned, Atty. Isaac B. Lipson of Chicago, chief counsel, told the Assocated (sic) Press that the "defendants are satisfied; we will not appeal."
     Alimony Question Late
     "The judicial record imparts verity," Judge Bell's decision said. The question of alimony has never been before cited until the present hearing. As En injured spouse Margaret Lloyd might well have been allowed one-fourth of his property but as an erring one, much less but still something."
     He upheld the divorce, granted in 1920 and declared that despite the testimony given by Frank Lloyd, a disinherited son, concerning alleged immorality on the part of Lloyd, "there is nothing in the case which lays its foundation in facts worthy of any credence, which casts as much as a shadow over the good name of the dead or living."
     Lloyd was re-married several years after his divorce to Henrietta Lloyd, who is still living. "
     here is nothing in the evidence," head the decision," to require the court to set aside the decree and to declare her, the legal wife."
     "We may now view the progress of Marshall B. Lloyd as far as it affects this case," the decision went on. "He was of an inventive turn of mind. Generally, he was much absorbed in his patents; eccentric sometimes but he was business man enough to secure the fruits of his inventions.
     Lloyd Claimed Desertion
     "By the time the plaintiff separated from him he was manager and part owner of a manufacturing establishment using his inventions, which employed 500 men, he was mayor of Menominee and looked upon as a man of wealth.
     "The plaintiff knew this. The record-in the divorce decree, though meager, shows Marshall B. Lloyd claimed the plaintiff deserted him.
     "Marshall B. Lloyd is dead. The mouth of the plaintiff is closed. She offered her own testimony as far as she could go as to an occurrence from which the court was asked to draw the inference that Marshall B. Lloyd was not true to her; that she described his predelictions (sic) to wander far from the fold and that she left him because of this and that he escorted her to the train when they forever severed marital relations.
     "She supports this, or attempts to, by testimony of a disinherited son of Marshall Lloyd to effect that the latter confessed his infidelity to him. This son so promptly appears in suit and concedes claim of plaintiff that in view of his disinheritance it is rather difficult to believe he is entirely disinterested and conviction is forced that his story loses nothing in telling. However the truth may be the evidence here relative to Mr. Lloy'ds (sic) conduct arouses at most suspicion and cannot be permitted to outweigh solemn decree of this court made nine years ago, declaring plaintiff guilty of desertion. The judicial record imports verily."
     Little Appeal to Court
     Relative to the claim of plaintiff of lack of jurisdiction by court in granting divorce decree because of errors in service papers involved, the court in substance said there was no showing that the plaintiff was misled by such errors. What showing was made, he said, "has little appeal to court at this late day," in view of the fact she was able to vigorously assert her claimed rights less than two months after the death of Mr. Lloyd after a silence of seven years.
     "So far as the evidence in this case concerns their characters, Marshall B. Lloyd may sleep in peace and the two women who were his wives may go forth worthy of respect."⁹

update crosskill info from Jean.¹²