For most people, the court system feels intimidating, arcane and impersonal. Cobb County Probate Court Chief Judge Kelli Wolk, the first woman to hold that elected office, does her best to add a little humanity to her proceedings.
Wolk often presides over guardianship cases involving parents and their disabled children who are turning 18. The process requires parents to explain why their children are not ready to live independently, which can be emotional for all parties involved.
As the parents work to justify their guardianship, Wolk often asks them a simple but surprising question: “What’s your favorite thing about your child?”
“These parents well up with tears because they publicly get to say something they’re proud of about their kid,” Wolk told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Just letting them brag for a minute. ... It’s such a small thing, but it’s such an important thing.”
Wolk has been Cobb’s chief probate judge since 2009, placing her in charge of the court that presides over the execution of wills, appointment and removal of guardians, commitments of the mentally ill and alcohol or drug abusers, and the issuance of marriage licenses and weapons licenses, among other duties.
Now in her 15th year on the job, she said she didn’t often think much of her status as the first woman elected to the position in Cobb. The significance only hit her when she explained it to her daughter a few years ago.
“She’s never known me not to be the probate judge of Cobb County,” Wolk said during Women’s History Month.
The idea that her mom was the first shocked Wolk’s daughter. Now 13 years old, she’s grown up seeing women as experts, doctors and presidential candidates, Wolk said. Her mother’s position as a local leader and elected official did not seem unusual in the slightest.
“She thought that was a really neat fact when she was younger, so that made it particularly special,” Wolk said.
Wolk did not originally aspire to work in the legal field, but she’s always had a passion for helping people. She initially wanted to work in television, a goal she pursued from her high school days and achieved in her 20s. She graduated from Southwest Missouri State University with a degree in communications, then went on to work in broadcast news and later in sports, joining the TNT production team for the NBA’s Utah Jazz.
But back in Wolk’s high school days, she had a friend whose brother was seriously developmentally disabled. Her friend’s experience led her to volunteer for a community organization that recruited and trained teenagers to provide respite care for parents of special needs children and young adults. Wolk spent many hours in high school working at this highly specialized babysitting service, giving parents a break while looking after kids who might need catheters or require percussive therapy to help them breathe.
Later in life, when Wolk was considering law school, she volunteered for Utah Legal Services, a pro bono program. She remembers two cases that stood out to her involving widows facing financial problems because of legal discrepancies. One elderly woman, who had no other means of income, was having trouble collecting her late husband’s social security payment because she had a different surname. Another woman, who lived alone, was being overcharged by her landlord because he had gone through her trash and found old bank statements that led him, incorrectly, to believe she was wealthy.
“There were other facts, but (both cases) just generally seemed unfair,” Wolk said.
Wolk went to Georgia State University’s College of Law with plans to become a sports and entertainment attorney, but taking her experiences into account, it seems almost obvious that she would pivot to probate law.
“I also had a phenomenal wills teacher in law school, so that helps,” she said with a laugh.
Now in her fourth term as the probate court’s chief judge, Wolk has brought significantly more transparency to a section of the legal system that has faced scrutiny and suspicion from the public in recent years. She mentioned the lengthy public battle over Britney Spears’ conservatorship as a major flashpoint that put guardianship laws under a microscope. Then, in 2020, Netflix released the movie ”I Care A Lot” starring Rosamund Pike as a con artist who preys on the elderly by forcing them into legally appointing her as their guardian. Wolk said she was horrified by the movie but strongly encouraged many attorneys in her field to watch it.
She pointed out that “I Care A Lot” was set in Nevada and that Georgia’s process for appointing legal guardians has many built-in safeguards that would have derailed the movie’s plot. But she said the public interest in legal guardianship was a helpful warning against complacency.
“Our goal and our singular focus is to be compassionate and find the best resolution to protect somebody who needs help,” Wolk said.
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