When The Unintended Spouse Inherits

The District of Columbia Disciplinary Counsel has informally admonished an attorney whose delay in prosecuting a divorce action for his client caused the estate to go to a long-estranged first wife when the client died.

Disciplinary Counsel concludes that you violated these [cited] Rules when you failed to advance your client‘s interests in obtaining a divorce as quickly as possible to permit him to marry Ms. Burgin. You understood that material assets were at stake, that your client wished to pass those assets on to Ms. Burgin – not to the woman from whom he had been separated for nearly 30 years, and that time was of the essence given your client‘s terminal condition. You failed to take a thorough or diligent approach to locating Mrs. Woodruff to serve her and were willing to wait indefinitely for your extremely ill client to conduct that legwork. Then, after the court dismissed the divorce action in October 2007, you waited four months before moving to reinstate it. Your actions and failures to act violated your duty to act competently, with diligence and zeal, and promptly. You failed to accomplish your client‘s goal to obtain a divorce in order to permit him to remarry before he died – a goal that could have succeeded had you given the matter the priority and attention required under the circumstances – in violation of Rules I. I (a) and (b), and l .3(a) and (c).

Ms. Burgin sued the attorney for legal malpractice but lost on appeal because she had not been the attorney’s client.

The case is In re Nigel L. Scott and can be found at this link.

Disclosure: Mr. Scott was counsel for an attorney I prosecuted early in my bar counsel career. (Mike Frisch)