Forked over by the previous owner?

I discovered a leaking fork seal on the Suzuki recently forked, and while I was terribly reluctant to start tearing the bike down mostly because I had just done so as a winter project. Sarah knows that I turn into a moping whiner when I can't get something done on the bikes so she pushed me a little.
In fact she jumped right in to help. I could never have suspended that bike off the ground without her. She threw some really good ideas at me. Eventually we got the bike off the ground. I was/am concerned about stability, and as it turns out she and I suspended that bike to within half a degree of perfectly level. Just dumb luck I suppose.

I have a couple of REALLY old bikes, so I know what dated, exhausted, chemicals smell like and let me tell you the....... "liquid" that came out of the TL's forks was something terrible. I fear with genuine concern that I just took the original (that's right twelve year old) fork oil out and poured it into a bottle for measurement. I mean fork oil doesn't really smell all that great to begin with, but DAMN this was some funky fork juice- and the darkest shade of gray that I had seen without labeling it black. I really began to wonder if the previous owner ever changed the oil forked.

The forks are tricky to disassemble, requiring either special tools, or 2.5 sets of hands. Well I had neither-forked
I then put out a call for assistance to some of the local riders I know. John called me within a couple of hours, he shopped around for me near Columbia but came up with service cost numbers only slightly less than the original quote at the local shop forked again.
So after having purchased all the parts, fresh oil, and even jack stands in an attempt to correct the problem- I may be forked into paying someone to replace the seals for me.