Where There's No Will

Four years before his death from what appears to have been an agricultural accident, Jeremiah Cranston, a crusty old rancher with a large ranch near the Crested Butte, Colorado, ski area, made a will. In that will, he disinherited his two children and left his entire $18 million estate to two very different charitable organizations-the Western Gun Owners Association and the Colorado Springs Center for the Arts. But, at Cranston's death, the original of his will can't be found, raising...
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Four years before his death from what appears to have been an agricultural accident, Jeremiah Cranston, a crusty old rancher with a large ranch near the Crested Butte, Colorado, ski area, made a will. In that will, he disinherited his two children and left his entire $18 million estate to two very different charitable organizations-the Western Gun Owners Association and the Colorado Springs Center for the Arts. But, at Cranston's death, the original of his will can't be found, raising a legal presumption he destroyed the will, in which event his children would inherit his estate. Jack McConnell, a mid-fifties nuts and bolts Colorado Springs lawyer who would rather be fly fishing in the rivers and lakes of Colorado than practicing law, and who worries about growing old, has been hired by the personal representative named in the missing will to enforce the will. Cranston's children resist, setting up a winner-take-all will contest to be decided by a jury in rural Gunnison County, Colorado.