Republican Town Committee delegates from the Towns of Canaan (Falls Village), Cornwall, Harwinton, Kent, Litchfield, Morris, Norfolk, North Canaan, Salisbury, Sharon, Thomaston, and Warren unanimously elected Attorney Patrick J. Wall as the party-endorsed nominee for Judge of Probate for the newly-created Litchfield Hills Probate District at a convention held at the Cornwall Town Hall on Thursday night.

Anna McGuire, Chairman of the North Canaan Town Committee, and Chairperson of the convention said that Litchfield First Selectman Leo Paul nominated Wall and that he was seconded by North Canaan First Selectman Doug Humes.

McGuire, Paul and Humes agreed that Wall was nominated because of his eleven years of outstanding experience and service as Judge of Probate in Harwinton; his working relationship with the Probate Administrator’s office and the Probate Assembly, and the vote of confidence Wall has received from his peers as their sole representative on their disciplinary council.

“We need a Judge of Probate who is dedicated and compassionate, has integrity, experience and the legal background,” Paul stated. “Patrick Wall meets those criteria and will serve our communities well during this transitional time.”

Wall has been Harwinton’s Probate Judge since 1999. He is a founding member of the Connecticut Judge’s Association for Local Probate Courts, Litchfield County’s current representative on the Executive Committee of the Probate Assembly and the probate judges’ sole member on the five-member Council on Probate Judicial Conduct.

“I am grateful that the Republicans of these twelve towns have nominated me as their candidate for Probate Judge and are supporting my campaign,” Wall said. “I promise I will continue to provide the people of all the twelve towns in the new Litchfield Hills District with the same quality of service to which they are accustomed.”

“If elected, I will maintain offices in Litchfield and North Canaan and if permitted, I will hold Court at each of the individual town halls on an as-needed basis similar to the half-day services currently provided in Kent. To that end, I will be a full-time judge. It is my pledge that the transition will be seamless and I will work to make the probate court more accessible to the people of the new district with the same staff of devoted clerks and with two courts that will each be open to the public forty hours a week.”

Wall also stated that due to new regulations, which will reduce the need for vault space in the courts to accommodate probate records, he is going to investigate whether the Litchfield Probate Court could operate in Bantam to alleviate the crowded offices now at the town hall in Litchfield and provide greater accessibility to the surrounding towns.

As Litchfield County’s representative on the Executive Committee of the Probate Assembly, Wall also supports recent legislation that would allow the twelve towns to calculate each town’s statutory contribution to the Probate Court by also factoring population and workload into the present method of grand list ratios.

Back to News