Bourlakova v Bourlakov: High Court refuses to halt estate's Ukrainian matrimonial property claim

The High Court has refused an application to stop the court-appointed representative of the late Oleg Bourlakov's estate from pursuing a Ukrainian matrimonial property counterclaim in long-running English litigation, despite acknowledging genuine concerns about parallel proceedings already underway in Monaco and Latvia.

Handing down judgement in Loudmila Bourlakova & Ors v The Estate of Oleg Bourlakov & Ors [2026] EWHC 2293 (Ch), Mr Justice Richard Smith declined to direct Nicholas Jacob, the Estate's representative appointed under CPR Part 19.12, to abandon a defence and counterclaim founded on Mr Bourlakov's alleged joint ownership rights over matrimonial property under Ukrainian law.

The underlying claim, issued in 2020, alleges that the late Mr Bourlakov pursued a strategy of dishonest and unlawful conduct aimed at maximising his own share of the couple's assets at the expense of his wife, Loudmila Bourlakova. The particulars of claim had originally carved out matrimonial property issues on the basis that such matters would be resolved by a foreign court dealing with succession to the estate, expected to be either Monaco or Latvia. Shortly before the English claim was issued, Mr Bourlakov had himself commenced proceedings in Monaco, known as the Asset Transfer Proceedings, seeking to enforce his matrimonial property rights against his wife and daughters.

Following Mr Bourlakov's death in 2021 and Mr Jacob's appointment as the Estate's representative in 2023, the Estate filed a defence and counterclaim in October 2024 that, for the first time, introduced matrimonial property regime issues into the English proceedings, identifying disputed dealings totalling around US$911 million.

The claimants argued that permitting the counterclaim to proceed in England created a serious risk of inconsistent findings across jurisdictions, particularly given that any English judgement on matrimonial property was unlikely to be recognised in Monaco while the Asset Transfer Proceedings remained pending there. They pointed to the practical difficulty of a single asset being characterised differently by different courts, the burden of defending overlapping claims in multiple jurisdictions, and the broad disclosure sought by the Estate, and offered undertakings intended to ensure any English award would be accounted for in whichever jurisdiction ultimately handled the liquidation of the marital estate.

Mr Jacob maintained that he had acted throughout on legal advice and in what he considered the best interests of the Estate, and that the Ukrainian matrimonial property defence, if made out, could significantly reduce the sums recoverable against the Estate. He argued the claimants, as adverse litigants, lacked standing to dictate his litigation strategy absent evidence of a breach of duty, and that the true position in the Monaco proceedings, including what the scheduled November 2026 hearing would actually determine, remained unclear.

Mr Justice Richard Smith agreed that the desirability of a single court applying a consistent approach to the full matrimonial estate was a compelling consideration, and that risks of inconsistent judgements and recognition difficulties were not fanciful. However, he found no basis to conclude that Mr Jacob had acted otherwise than properly and in the Estate's interests, noting that the Monaco proceedings had been largely dormant when the English counterclaim was filed and that the procedural trajectory of the Monégasque and Latvian claims remained too uncertain to justify shutting down a validly pleaded English claim. Any such concerns, he held, were better addressed through case management, potentially including a stay, once clearer information became available.

The judge directed that a further case management conference take place only after the Monaco hearing scheduled for November 2026, by which point the court expects concrete information on the trajectory of the foreign proceedings.