Florida residents heading into probate court have at least one thing to be grateful for: They are not in one particular courtroom in Connecticut. That courtroom in a town near Hartford was presided over by a judge who has appeared before the Council on Probate Judicial Conduct a few times this month to respond to allegations of judicial misconduct.

The story centers on the will of a Connecticut woman, J.S. It should have been a simple matter: J.S. wrote a will that left her farm to Sam, her farmhand and caretaker. The will was filed with the county. The farm was worth at least $1.5 million.

Sam had, indeed, taken care of his boss. When J.S. could not pay her medical bills, he mortgaged his own home to help pay them off -- only to have his foreclosed on the house later. When J.S. became incapacitated, Sam became her conservator, visiting her daily and seeing that she was settled in a nursing facility when she could no longer live on her own. But in 2008, the judge replaced Sam as conservator, appointing in his place an attorney who apparently had no interest in the well-being of J.S. or of her estate.

Fast forward to May 2009. J.S. was 92 and dying in a nursing home. Her trusted friend Sam could no longer make decisions on her behalf. The judge had not seen J.S. for over a year, and the attorney, her legal conservator, had never met her.  "I don't speak dementia," he artfully explained.

The judge called a hearing to remove Sam from the will and to place the farm in two trusts. The trust beneficiaries were three local Catholic churches. When J.S. died in June 2009, the farm was transferred to the churches and eventually went to developers.

To be continued in our next post ...

Resource: The Hartford Courant "Southington Probate Court Judge Faces Judicial Misconduct Charges" 9/10/10