By Ryan McKeen
I love those new light bulbs, you know, the spiral kind. Their packaging tells me that I can save $120 a year or something if I replace my old fashioned light bulbs. Having changed out my bulbs – they’re not kidding, I do save money on my monthly electric bill.
The problem is to save that money, I must first spend money on new bulbs. If I didn’t have any money, I’d be stuck with my old bulbs which would cost me more money each month and I’d be poorer because of it.
Cool New Light Bulb
The Hartford Courant does near weekly articles on how much our probate courts cost and how they’re nearly bankrupt.
One of the reasons probate courts operate at a deficit is conservatorships. If a person doesn’t have money the court appoints an attorney for the proposed conserved person and pays that attorney at a rate of $50 an hour. If the person is conserved, the court also pays a conservator $50 an hour to manage that person’s affairs.
One of the most effective ways to prevent a conservatorship proceeding is to execute a living will and power of attorney. People often end up conserved because for one reason or another they fail to do any advanced planning.
Sometimes perceived cost is a reason people don’t see an attorney to do a living will or a power of attorney.
Consequently, our state pays more for conservatorships because people don’t do advanced planning.
It’s like we’re running our state on old light bulbs.
What the legislature should consider is a tax credit on legal fees for people who do some advanced planning.
What the legislature is doing is considering a tax on legal services and raising the attorney occupational tax – both of which will result in a higher cost of legal services for residents of Connecticut.
Raising the cost of legal services for the middle class is about as short sighted as the state deciding to raise taxes on those cool new light bulbs.
We the people of CT. need to stand up, It is never to late. The Hamden probate judge Salvatore Diglio has been sited by the state wide grievance committee and the state lets him be a probate judge. The Milford judge is also an attorney and does not know the probate laws. take a good look at the probate reform bill, All it does is close down courts and does not provide any protection for us, the end users. We need to be protected from Judges like Beverly Streit-kefals and others just like her that are to busy with their other business's that they don't have time to learn the probate laws. Shame on all of you who call this self serving bill reform. Maybe it's time that we put someone other then that political hack Judge Paul Knierim in charge of the probate courts and the reform. Lets repeal this and put the people in charge. It is sad when you hear jokes like this about our probate system. What do you call an attorney that has failed in private pratice?…..A connecticut probate judge.