Opinion ID: 1632626
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Juvenile-Probate Judge

Text: In view of the holding of this Court in Waters v. Schmutzer, 583 S.W.2d 756 (Tenn. 1979), coupled with the resignation of the county judge, Marion County has no county officer to hold the juvenile and probate courts. The Chancellor ordered that the county legislative body elect a qualified person to perform the judicial functions formerly exercised by the County Judge and that the person so selected be designated Juvenile-Probate Judge or such other appropriate title as might be fixed by the legislative body. Thereafter, the office would be filled by the people at the August 1980 election to hold office until September 1, 1982. A juvenile court judge is a county officer, and Article VII, Section 2, authorizes the county legislative body to fill vacancies. See Waters, supra . As we pointed out in Waters , Sections 37-201, T.C.A., et seq., create the juvenile court and provide that the judge shall be the county judge or chairman in all counties except in those counties where juvenile courts are especially provided by statute. Section 37-202(8), T.C.A. We have no specific statute of like import dealing with the probate court; however, our statutes make it clear that the county court is the probate court. See, e.g., Section 32-201, T.C.A., relating to the place of proving and recording wills. See also Section 16-701, T.C.A., which recites that [a] court is established in each county for the dispatch of probate and other business intrusted to it, to be called the county court. The 1978 Constitutional Amendments superseded this court. We know judicially that the probate duties in many counties have been transferred to the general sessions court; that there are separate probate courts and that various private acts govern probate jurisdictions. Viewed realistically the probate court is just as much a part of our judicial system as the juvenile court. Probate judges too are county officers. Actually, there is not a vacancy in the office of probate judge as much as there is a void. Marion County has no judge of probate. We think there is little doubt that the juvenile judge elected as aforesaid could sit as probate judge. What he is called is of no consequence. We hold, during this period of transition, pending the passage by the Legislature of the proposed measure designed to restructure the trial courts of the State, which places probate jurisdiction in the chancery court, or pending some other legislative solution, there is no constitutional impediment to the selection of a juvenile and probate judge in the manner proposed in Marion County. We, therefore, affirm the Chancellor in this respect.