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12/02/2014 11:00 PMIt would take considerable effort to find someone as deeply entwined with the area as outgoing Judge of Probate Joel Helander. Joel has served Madison since the town's probate court system consolidated Madison and Guilford into one judicial district in 2011. Before that, Joel had been judge of probate for 15 years in Guilford, and has served both towns for nearly four years now.
Joel says, "The probate court is the oldest court system in the United States. The Guilford district was formed in 1719 and originally embraced all the shore towns from Guilford to Old Saybrook. Gradually they were split up into smaller entities, so the consolidation reversed that trend."
Joel and those who work with him represent those who can't represent themselves, either because they are too young or ill, no longer alive, or haven't been born yet.
Probate's central role, Joel says, "is to orchestrate law and order and dispense justice at the time of a person's death. Probate is derived from the Latin probare, meaning 'to prove or validate,' so a central role is to probate wills at the time of a person's death and to oversee the division and distribution of property to those persons legally entitled to it. Ultimately our role is to defend the testator or testatrix, the one who makes a will, and to effectuate their intent."
As for the sick, young, and unborn, Joel adds, "The probate of wills is at least 50 percent of what we do. But interestingly, there are many other areas that have been assigned to the probate court such as conservatorships, where we can adjudicate somebody legally incapable or incompetent after hearing evidence and testimony, intervene in the least restrictive way, and have somebody oversee their affairs."
Preserving the rights of those who cannot fight for their own is what Joel is most proud of.
"The 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution says, 'No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law,'" Joel points out, adding, "That's what we're doing. Under due process of law, such as with a conservatorship, we honor and protect everybody's constitutional freedoms. That means we have to have a hearing, we have to have an impartial tribunal, an impartial judge. These are all such ordinary steps and I'm always reminding my clerks of how important these ordinary steps are. They protect the process of law-the fair hearing, the notice, the opportunity to be heard, the right to have counsel."
Native Son
Joel is a Guilford native whose early career was in the emergency medical services. He was an EMT and then a paramedic who took an intensive one-year course at the Yale School of Medicine.
Nineteen seems to be his magic number.
"I was in the field for 19 years being the eyes and ears of physicians in pre-hospital care," He says. "I loved it and it was my life."
An injury in 1992 that required hip and pelvic surgery ended his paramedic career, but that time fighting in injured folks' corners planted the seeds for Joel's 19 years as judge of probate, as did his role as Guilford town historian, to which he was appointed in 1990.
"All my life I've done original research and arbitrated facts and drawn conclusions through inference on those facts," Joel explains. "I thought I was right for the [judge of probate] job."
Shirley Sabine was retiring, so Joel campaigned and won election in November 1995. He is the longest-serving judge of probate Guilford has seen in the past 100 years. Peter Barrett is Joel's successor.
"I was coming into what we would call a people's court," Joel says. "Probate is often called a people's court because it's relatively informal-we don't have a high bench, we don't have robes, we don't have a gavel. We strive to keep it user-friendly and accessible, which marks us very differently from the superior court. Ultimately, I think that, given the tremendous sensitivities that we experience with court matters and the people we encounter during the most difficult and vulnerable periods of their lives, we do have to interact in a very different way that's not always possible in superior court."
Indeed, Joel's kind and whip-smart demeanor most certainly comforted and provided guidance to many local families over the past two decades.
"I think the interaction with the public is what I most enjoy," Joel states. "I've enjoyed knowing so many people in my district, both in Madison and Guilford having lived here all my life, like my mother and grandfather and forebears before me. There's continuity there and there's also continuity with the cases we handle-not so much with a decedent's estate or a probate estate, but, for example, the guardianship of minors. We often will intervene in a case when a child is born, and until that child reaches the age of maturity, we're overseeing that child's life, more or less, with appointed guardians."
Another item of continuity in Guilford is Joel's family. The house in which he lives was built in 1851 and was first owned by his great-, great-grandfather. His mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all born there. His mother's family, the Bentons, came to Guilford in 1640-one year after the town was founded-so it's easy to see why Joel is so interested in Guilford and its people.
'The Flags Are Still Flying'
Joel still has several years to go before the probate court system would force him to retire at 70.
"One of the things that people always ask me is why I'm retiring at 63," he says. "I was following my gut believing that you need to retire when you're young enough to have your glory days and pursue other things with vigor-in other words, to go out when the flags are still flying, and the people are still cheering and you can move on to other adventures and challenges. For me, the timing was right."
Joel's retirement may be a loss to those he's helped over the past 19-plus years, but any free time he gains by the newfound lack of probate duties will quickly fill with other passionate pursuits that will benefit from his attention.
There's the bottomless well of history for Joel to explore. Joel's been into Guilford's history since high school, which nowadays would make him a teacher's dream. But as a high-schooler in the 1960s, his teachers' reactions to his active interest in history were lukewarm at best.
"History was not embraced by any of the curriculum, so I kind of languished in high school," Joel says. "Even my U.S. history teacher didn't recognize any of the work I was doing. Madison and Guilford were not recognized then as the living laboratories for the study of history as they are now. It was lonely work. I didn't have a lot of people to share it with back then." But then the bicentennial arrived, Alex Haley's Roots came into being, Guilford celebrated its 350th anniversary, and suddenly history was a hot topic.
A certain lighthouse was also beckoning.
Joel says, "One of my passions, stemming out of my town historian work, is my love for Faulkner's Island Lighthouse, a historic lighthouse in Guilford."
Because he was concerned about the erosion creeping up on the structure's foundation, Joel helped found a group known as the Faulkner's Light Brigade in 1991. He had recently published a book on the history of the island and, in it, pointed out the erosion.
He recalls, "That was a high point in my life, I believe, because we mounted a grassroots campaign in Guilford that went all the way to the halls of Congress to get a $4.5 million appropriation for erosion control, which was administered by the Army Corps of Engineers. I was chairman of that group for 11 years, and it culminated in an erosion control project and restoration of the lighthouse. So that's always loomed up large in my life."
Much of Joel's life, he says, is oriented toward Guilford's cultural, historic resources. "Ultimately, I think I'll be returning to more original research, getting more involved with all things historical in Guilford," he says. "But you can't jump into things. You have to creep before you crawl, before you land on committees, boards, and commissions. I think I'll probably be involved with a lot of unfinished historical projects and, for sure, research and maybe some writing in the future. I'm so happy that I was able to recognize that the timing was right to retire."
The probate clerks are hosting a reception for Joel at the Madison-Guilford Probate Court at 8 Meetinghouse Lane in Madison on Monday, Jan. 5 from 3 to 6 p.m. The public is invited.
To nominate someone for Person of the Week, email Melissa at m.babcock@shorepublishing.com.