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Rusu appointed to probate court judgeship
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: July 8, 2014
Gov. John Kasich has appointed Canfield attorney Robert N. Rusu to fill the vacant seat on the Mahoning County Probate Court. He takes office today.
The appointment is not for a long period of time. The office will be up for election in November for a term beginning in February 2015, and Rusu said that his name will be on the ballot.
Rusu, of the law firm Lane & Rusu, has been involved in the practice of probate law for his entire legal career, an area of emphasis that stretches back to Thomas Cooley Law School in Michigan.
Rusu is a member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and is a past president of the Mahoning County Bar Association. He received his undergraduate degree from Youngstown State University.
“I have been practicing law for over 20 years, pretty much exclusively in the areas of probate law, elder law, estate administration and planning, and guardianships,” he said.
“Even before graduating from law school, I worked in an elder law clinic,” he said. “Working on documents and representing the elderly. Pretty much my whole career has been involved with aging issues and elder law.”
When he came back to his hometown of Canfield after graduating from law school, he almost immediately connected with his current law partner, Joseph D. Lane, who came from a family of funeral home owners, and who was looking for “a young person to go into elder law practice with. Twenty-one years later—here we are.”
In addition to probate and elder care private law, Rusu said the firm also represents Lane Family Funeral Homes, which is the third largest family funeral home business in Ohio, with nine funeral homes. The family also owns an ambulance company and employs over 200 people, he said.
Rusu is co-author of a practical guide to elder law and the probate process for lay people, titled Smart Planning for Life and Death.
Rusu will have to divest himself of his private practice before he takes the bench, a process that he said he has begun.
Looking forward to taking his seat on the bench, Rusu said that he can envision making some changes to court processes. He knows this court very well, he said.
“I have handled over 1400 cases in front of the Mahoning County Probate Court,” he said. In addition, he has administrative experience with his firm, which employs four attorneys and five administrative assistants.
Rusu said he would like to enhance the court’s online presence and allow for facsimile filing.
Particularly, Rusu would like to engage in public education about the nature and function of probate court.
“I want to increase access to, and public knowledge about, probate court,” he said. “That court affects so many people’s lives. Of all of the courts, it is the one that eventually touches everyone.”
Rusu would like to implement educational programs about guardianships, mental health issues and the court, and other issues, he said, letting the public know that the court is “here to help.”
Rusu said that his experience in working with clients in front of the court will also help him when people are in front of him. Most of a probate court’s business, he said, is non-adversarial. “This is a court that helps people.”
His appointment to this position is the fulfillment of a career-long dream he said, although it does put him into the middle of a political world that he has never before been a part of.
Although appointments to the bench in Ohio go through a political process, Rusu said that he is “not a political animal.” He has never been registered as a member of any political party, but he has voted in every election since he has been eligible to vote, he said. “I vote for the person I think is the most qualified, or I vote on issues.”
He said he sees his appointment as fairly straightforward. He believes that the governor “selected the most qualified person for the position,” adding that he agrees with people who say that a judge should have substantial experience practicing in a court before taking a seat on the bench of that court.
In November, the electorate will decide who will sit on the probate court bench for the next six years. Until then, Robert Rusu said he will make his mark on that court.