Home Law School News Alumna Ruth Klotz’s retirement mentioned in USA Today, The Des Moines Register

Alumna Ruth Klotz’s retirement mentioned in USA Today, The Des Moines Register

Drake Law graduate and Iowa’s 90-year-old probate judge, Hon. Ruth Klotz, LW’55, was recently in a story covered by both The Des Moines Register and USA Today.

By Jeff Eckhoff
The tiny, elderly lady in the smart business suit still drives herself to work six days a week, carefully gliding her huge white Buick into a premier parking space that sits nearly on top of the eastern door of the Polk County Courthouse.

District Associate Probate Judge Ruth Klotz gets a kick out of the parking space. “Seniority,” she says, smiling. Next year, someone else will claim the parking space.

Ninety-year-old Klotz, Iowa’s oldest judge, is scheduled to retire Jan. 31, triggering a seismic shift in the way Polk County’s courthouse handles wills, estates and legal guardianships for troubled children and the feeble elderly. Klotz, soft-spoken but a stickler for the details, has spent 34 continuous years as Polk County’s chief overseer of such matters. By all accounts, her colleagues and the lawyers who appear before her continue to respect her.

Read more in USA Today.

The original story ran in The Des Moines Register with a follow-up on February 2.