There are plenty of local races on next month’s ballot, including every county’s probate judge position. But, do voters know the qualifications for those spots?

Probate courts in the 67 Alabama counties have a big job-- it’s the court that handles adoptions, marriages, mental health commitments, and condemnations. All probate judges in Alabama are also the chief election official of that county.

But, despite those obvious legal issues, these judges are not required to be lawyers and there are no formal training requirements.

According to the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office website, the state requirements for a county probate judge are as follows: Be a registered voter, be at least 18 years old, reside in the district which the candidate seeks to represent for one year before election, not run after age 70, be a state resident for one year, be a U.S. citizen for one day, and be a registered voter. The probate judge serves a six-year term, and there is no limit to how many times a judge can hold the office. The state website mentions nothing about a law degree or legal experience.

Each county, however, can lay out separate, additional requirements for the role, though: Both Jefferson and Mobile counties require their probate judges to be attorneys. There is one probate judge in each county, except for Jefferson County, which has two and both are attorneys.

Three other counties—Pickens, Shelby, and Houston—have a special, local law that doesn’t require the probate judge to be a lawyer, but gives the judge more power if he or she is a lawyer in good standing with the state bar.

Alabama is one of only four states that allow a probate judge to be a non-lawyer, according to the Alabama Law Review; the other states are Connecticut, Maryland, and New Jersey. Some states allow non-lawyers continue to serve on the bench under grandfather clauses. District and circuit court judges in the state are required to be lawyers.

While there’s no requirement to be an attorney in most counties, a number of those elected to the post do have a law degree.

According to the Alabama Probate Judges Association Education Committee Chairman Judge John Earl Paluzzi, approximately 22 probate judges in the state are lawyers. That’s up from in 2007, when he said there were less than 10 probate judges who were lawyers. That means probate court in 45 counties are led by a judge without a law degree.

The issue of probate judges and their legal experience came up over 50 years ago, Paluzzi said, when the Probate Judges Association opted out of a judicial article that required judges to be attorneys. Many of the judges at the time weren’t lawyers, and they were satisfied with the way the system was working at the time.

Paluzzi, who has been chairman of the education committee for nine years, said he has worked to organize continuing education conferences where lawyers and judges teach classes for sitting probate court judges. “We’ve bent over backwards … to get them adequately trained in probate law,” Paluzzi said. “Judges need to know this stuff.”

While education is a point of contention in probate court, so is payment. Because probate judges are county employees, they are paid by a salary set by the respective county commission. According to information from the Association of County Commissions of Alabama, the Mobile County probate judge was the state’s highest-paid in 2015 with an annual salary of more than $155,800. The same data showed probate judges in Barbour and Bullock counties earn about $52,500 per year. But, that payment also reflects the workflow of the court. Paluzzi said he could have as many cases on his docket during a month that a judge in Jefferson County has in a single day.

All Alabama counties have probate seats on their ballots next month, but not all those races are contested. In Jefferson County, for example, both the first seat and second seat incumbents are running uncontested. In Shelby County, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Lyn Stuart appointed Allison Boyd to complete the term of Probate Judge Jim Fuhrmeister, who has retired. Boyd is unopposed as well.

Personally, Paluzzi said he believes probate judges should be required to be lawyers. “If [the county doesn’t] have a lawyer, it probably does not serve the people of that county as sufficiently as if there’s a lawyer there. There’s an argument to be made there, because they can learn the law… but I know where to go to find [the law].”

“You’ll learn a lot in law school that you won’t use, but you will have the knowledge of there to go to find the law. Then you have a good foundation to bring you into a judicial setting,” Paluzzi said. “I believe that anyone who does not have a law degree, who has no experience in the law, is at a disadvantage when they take the bench.”

However, Paluzzi said, he has turned to both lawyer and non-lawyer probate judges over the years for advice. “Not to say lawyers have all that knowledge that they need… you learn by educating yourself. A good person of average intelligence could come into office… and become a competent judge, but it takes years and years to learn all that. A lawyer is going to come in and have a step ahead than the non-lawyer judge.”