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About two years ago, the New Hampshire Legislature established the Circuit Court consolidating—the probate, family, and district courts into a single forum. A Circuit Court judge may hear cases within each of the three divisions. This significant change was designed to save money and to alleviate some of the strain on the court system. As the dockets in the Circuit Court continue to fill up, the recent establishment of a new "Trust Docket" and the addition of several full-time judges should further help to create a more effective and responsive probate court.
The Trust Docket
The Circuit Court recently announced the "Trust Docket," a dedicated court within the Circuit Court system that will hear complex trust and estate cases. Judge Gary Casavecchia has been assigned as the Trust Docket judge. He will be relieved of his other routine probate division duties and will focus solely on hearing probate division cases where significant assets are at stake or where there are complex issues that may result in a multi-day trial. The Trust Docket will take cases involving trusts, challenges to trusts, as well as estate cases such as "will contests," claims of misuse of estate funds or power-of-attorney documents and related cases. By dedicating a single judge to hear these types of cases, the hope is that the matters will be more streamlined and trials will be held on consecutive days without interruption. Currently, it is not unusual for a multi-day trial to be spread out over many weeks or even months. Judge Casavecchia is an experienced probate judge who has been sitting on the bench since 1981. The creation of this new Trust Docket is indeed innovative and timely, as the courts are seeing more and more filings involving these complex cases.
Four New Circuit Court Judges
In addition to the Trust Docket, Governor Maggie Hassan recently nominated four individuals to serve as full-time Circuit Court judges. Two have been serving in different judicial capacities, while two others are new to the New Hampshire judiciary. With the addition of Susan Carbon, Robert James Foley, Margaret-Ann Moran, and Pat Quigley to the Circuit Court bench, the Circuit Court should be able to absorb some of the recent and upcoming judicial retirements. This is more good news for the probate division.
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The Devine, Millimet & Branch Probate Litigation Group offers this free periodic Newsletter to provide information regarding probate litigation news and other probate-related topics. If you have any questions about this e-mail, or if you know of others who may be interested in receiving these alerts, please contact us at probate@devinemillimet.com.
This is not a legal document nor is it intended to serve as legal advice or a legal opinion. Devine, Millimet & Branch, P.A. makes no representations that this is a complete or final description or procedure that would ensure legal compliance and does not intend that the reader should rely on it as such.
© Copyright 2014 Devine Millimet & Branch, Professional Association
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