Practice Yields Many Emotional Rewards

Describing “perhaps the most difficult and most expensive probate I’ve ever undertaken in my 34 years of practice,” RWO’s Bud Bourke was recently featured in Law Week Colorado along with several other of the state’s leading estate planning lawyers.  Each described what the legal weekly deemed “the most memorable cases of their careers”.

For Bourke it involved a Colorado resident who died after moving off to Ireland.

 “It took seven years start to finish,” Bourke said. “ He purchased real estate in Ireland and on the Costa del Sol in Spain.”

Filing estate and inheritance tax returns in Spain and Ireland proved difficult. It began with valuing the properties there. “It was also difficult communicating effectively with the Spanish courts, even with the assistance of Spanish counsel,” Bourke said. Spain uses a different probate procedure in which most beneficiaries of assets there have to represented by their own lawyers. 

“It made me thankful the uniform probate code was adopted in Colorado,” Bourke said. 

Despite those difficulties and wrangling with the United Kingdom’s tax code, the latter which Bourke used Irish counsel to untangle, the “longest single aspect of this from start to finish was dealing with the gentlemen’s former Colorado spouse.” 

Lack of a clear paper trail made the case difficult form start to finish, Bourke said, adding that the case once again demonstrates that clear documentation and preparation are the key to maximizing the value of an inheritance.