Martha Blood Wentworth took her seat as judge of the Indiana Tax Court on January 17, 2011. Judge Wentworth was appointed to the position by Governor Mitch Daniels on December 22, 2010. She was one of the three candidates presented to Governor Daniels by Indiana’s seven-member Judicial Nominating Commission. She succeeds Judge Thomas G. Fisher who retired in December as the state’s first Tax Court Judge. Judge Wentworth’s formal robing ceremony will take place in the Supreme Court Courtroom, State House 3rd Floor at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 8, 2011.
Upon appointment, Judge Wentworth said, “I am humbled to have been chosen by the Governor to try to fill the shoes of my mentor and friend, Judge Thomas Fisher. My goal is to maintain the tax court as a forum where devotion to the rule of law, fairness to all litigants, and professional civility are the benchmarks.”
Judge Wentworth, who was born in Detroit, Michigan, moved to Indiana with her family during high school. She earned undergraduate degrees from both the former Bennett College of Millbrook, New York and Indiana University in Bloomington.
Upon earning her law degree from Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, she clerked for Judge Fisher at the Tax Court for two years. Then, from 1992 to 1998, she practiced tax law with the Indianapolis law firm of Hall Render Killian Heath & Lyman. Since 1998, Judge Wentworth has been with Deloitte Tax LLP, serving for nearly ten years as tax director, leading the Indiana multistate tax group. In addition, she teaches graduate level classes in state and local taxation as an adjunct professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Bloomington.
Indiana’s General Assembly established the Indiana Tax Court on July 1, 1986. The Tax Court has exclusive jurisdiction over any case that arises under the Indiana tax laws and is an initial appeal of a final determination made by the Indiana Board of Tax Review or the Indiana Department of State Revenue. In addition, the Tax Court has jurisdiction over certain appeals from the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance.