Judge of 17 Years No Match for the Tangled Web of Queens Surrogate’s Court
By Ross Barkan
Gothamist
Feb. 20, 2020
Excerpt:
Clyde Waite, a Yale-educated attorney and senior judge, did not expect to be stymied by the notorious Queens County Surrogate’s Court.
But Waite has been mired in Queens Surrogate’s Court for a decade, attempting to settle, without success, the estate of his sister, who died in Queens without a will. Ten years is an extraordinarily long amount of time for an estate to not be settled. Even complex cases, observers say, only take a handful of years.
Waite believes the court’s insider politics are playing a role in thwarting him and his family.
“The wealth that is processed through the Surrogate’s Court system in the State of New York is extraordinary, and there is an incredible concentration of authority in a very small handful of people,” said James Sample, a Hofstra University law professor who studies New York’s judicial system. “This is one of those dirty little secrets of New York politics.”
Read the full article on the Gothamist website.
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