Candidate Profile: Hilary Gingold Running For NY County Surrogate

This Patch article is sponsored by the Hilary Gingold for Manhattan Surrogate campaign.

Hilary Gingold is a life-long New Yorker, who lives in Manhattan with her husband of 38 years. The couple shares two adult children. Before law school, Gingold worked as a social worker with Catholic Charities, working closely with senior citizens on the variety of challenges they face whether access to services, medical care, food, housing issues, etc. It was through that experience she realized that by becoming a lawyer she could better serve. She spent 25 years in private practice, focused mainly on wills, trusts, estate planning and guardianships, “the meat and potatoes that is the core of the Surrogate’s Court docket” and rose to senior positions with city and borough-based Bar Associations, including serving as President of the Network of Bar Leaders.

“I believe that I have the critical skills, both academically and empathetically, to become the Surrogate for New York County. I have a working knowledge of the people that most often appear before the court, whether that court be housing, family, criminal or small claims. I am able to see through the same lens by which litigants define their own lives and the situations that they find themselves in, which in turn has helped me to develop the necessary elements to exhibiting proper judicial demeanor on the bench.”

Patch recently had a chance to talk with Hilary Gingold to learn more about her run for Surrogate for New York County.

Patch: What attracted you to politics, and how did you get started?

Gingold: As a judge, a court attorney, a lawyer in private practice and a social worker, I have seen that public service is the best way I have been able to serve my community and ensure litigants can find justice in the most efficient, equitable way and move on with their lives.

Running for judge is not like running for an executive or legislative position, so it is not politics that attracted me, but the ability to serve the public interest. Having said that, as part of the campaign, I and the other candidates have presented our credentials, experience and commitment to Democratic clubs all across Manhattan and those clubs nearly-unanimously chose to endorse my candidacy for which I am grateful.

Patch: What distinguishes you from other candidates?

Gingold: What distinguishes me from the other candidates in the race is that none of the others can match my experience and knowledge in one of the most specialized areas of law a judge has to deal with.

I am prepared on Day 1 to begin ruling from the bench to clear the backlog that so negatively impacts vulnerable litigants who are stymied from moving on with their lives because of that backlog. It is what I did as a principal court attorney for the Chief Judge’s Excellence Initiative, when the court system assigned me to clear up backlogs in the Bronx (more than 6,000 cases) and then, after my election as a Civil Court Judge, when I was assigned to Brooklyn (more than 2,000) cases when the pandemic hit. I work tirelessly to address the concerns of litigants every day, giving resolution to matters that have been on hold way too long.

Before entering the court system I ran a not-for-profit program dedicated to helping families and individuals stay in their homes from foreclosure stemming from the 2008 fiscal crisis that threatened to force people from their homes, bringing all parties to the table to find a solution that again allowed people to move on with their lives. I have been a trouble-shooter within the court system and through my life, and that is the commitment I will bring to Surrogate’s Court.

As the only sitting jurist, I am the only candidate with a proven track record of treating all litigants who appear in her courtroom with fairness, compassion and experience, all the necessary skills to serve as our next Surrogate.

I have been rated Most Highly Qualified by the New York County Independent Judicial Screening Panel and Approved by both the New York City Bar Association and LeGal, LGBT Bar Association of New York.

I am honored to have been endorsed by NYS Congress Members Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler; NYS Senators Cordell Cleare and Robert Jackson; NYS Assembly Members Inez E. Dickens; Richard Gottfried, Linda Rosenthal and Al Taylor; Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine; NYC Council Members Erik Bottcher and Keith Powers; and Gregory Floyd, President of the Local 237 Teamsters.

I am a proud alumna of St. John’s University School of Law as well as Adelphi University School of Social Work. I have served as past president of the Network of Bar Leaders, a coalition of over 50 bar associations dedicated to providing a forum to foster dialogue between the leadership of these diverse bar associations in the greater New York Metropolitan area.

I continue to serve as a bar leader in many other associations including past president of the Queens County Bar Association, vice-president of the Brandeis Association, delegate to the New York State Bar Association, past-Board Member for Legal Services — NYC, and past board member of the Queens County Women’s Bar.

I am a current member of the Jewish Lawyers Guild, the New York City Bar, New York Women’s Bar and the New York State Academy of Trial Lawyers. I am also a member of the New York City Civil Court Judges Association and the National Association of Women Judges — New York Chapter and as such, served as an immediate past-Co-Chair of the Judicial Legal Internship Program, providing internships matching law students with judges throughout New York State.

Patch: If you were to be elected, what would some of your top priorities/policies/changes be?

Gingold: Surrogate’s Court deals with complex and emotional issues for the most vulnerable, whether it involves inheritance, appointing guardians for disabled adults or adoptions. Sensitivity and transparency dealing with litigants, is critical to the administration of justice and timely resolution of outstanding matters, whether they are represented by counsel or are self-represented.

Understanding the value of mediation and implementing the tools to get matters in front of the court and out the door, so to speak, should be the hallmark of Surrogate’s Court in the 21st Century. As the Surrogate, I will be committed to resolving the business of death and dying so families and individuals can move on with the facts of life as they struggle with the realities of grief.

As part of my commitment to transparency, I would seek to reform the appointment of counsel to the Public Administrator through an independent screening panel to ensure that there is no political favoritism involved in assigning lawyers to handle the estates of those who die without wills.

There is no reason to limit the number of firms who can handle that work, and expanding the pool of qualified attorneys can expand diversity, including language proficiency, to handle the litigants who come before the court. And expanding the number of firms has two other benefits — it allows for a more expeditious resolution of cases before the court so litigants can move on with their lives, and it helps train the next generation of attorneys in the intricacies of the kind of specialized law that falls under the jurisdiction of the Surrogate’s Court.

It is also the case that the jurisdiction of the Surrogate’s Court is expanding into areas of adoption, surrogate pregnancy, trans-rights and other aspects of individuals’ evolving sense of their own identity and other areas of family law. I wrote an op-ed for the New York Daily News on the implications of the new Gender Recognition Act on the rights of non-binary individuals and other to effectuate name changes for both their sense of identity and, in the case of survivors of domestic violence, their personal safety.

Patch: What’s the biggest challenge or most difficult moment you’ve faced during this election? And, what is the most satisfying part about running in this election?

Gingold: The biggest challenge, and the most satisfying part of running, has been trying to explain to voters about the importance and functions of the Surrogate’s Court. raveling to all the neighborhoods in Manhattan has revealed the complexity, diversity, strengths and challenges faced by residents through the borough and deepened my commitment to public service.

Patch: How can readers learn more about you and your campaign?

Gingold: Readers can find more information about me and why I’m running for Surrogate on my campaign website.