A judge took 10-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt from her mother and gave her and her trust to her aunt

Reginald Vanderbilt inherited $7.5 million, and creditors and taxes consumed most of it. He died in 1925, when his daughter Gloria was 18 months old. She and her half-sister shared a $5 million trust run by Surrogate James Foley. Foley paid the widow, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, $4,000 a month for the child's upkeep. The mother spent long periods in Europe. In 1932 the girl went to live with her aunt, the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, at Old Westbury, and Foley cut the mother's allowance from $48,000 to $9,000 a year. The mother sued for custody. The trial before Justice John F. Carew ran from 1 October to 21 November 1934. A nurse, Emma Keislich, testified that she saw the mother in bed with a German prince. A French maid testified that Lady Milford Haven kissed the mother "just like a lover." Carew closed the courtroom and questioned the child in chambers. She told him her mother "never even kissed me good night." On 21 November 1934 he gave custody to Whitney. The mother got weekends, eight hours on Christmas Day and July. The New York Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case. At 21 the daughter took control of a trust of about $4.7 million^† and cut off her mother; they reconciled before the mother died in 1965^†. Gloria Vanderbilt died on 17 June 2019. Probate documents put her estate under $1.5 million. Her son Anderson Cooper received most of it.