**Nanette Beattie Bracken has been practicing law in Fairfield County Connecticut for nearly thirty years. She specializes in real estate law - the

purchase and sale of residential and commercial properties, leases and refinances. She also devotes a substantial amount of her practice to estate planning and estate and trust administration.  

     Attorney Bracken has been an active member of the community throughout the years. She is vice chairperson of the Ridgefield Housing Commission and a host mother to children whose mothers are inmates at Bedford Hills Correctional Institution. 

     Attorney Bracken is a member of the Board of Trustees of Wooster School. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association and the Connecticut Bar Association. She is counsel to several local corporations, to St. Mary's Church and was legal counsel for five years to the West Mountain Estates Home Owners Association. She was formerly a Fact Finder for the Judicial District of Danbury, a member of Birthright and the Ridgefield Youth Commission and a catechist at St. Mary's Church.  

     Attorney Bracken was born in 1950 in Poughkeepsie and spent most of her growing up years in Rochester, New York, the eldest of five children. She is a graduate of Our Lady of Mercy High School and Vassar College. She graduated from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 1975 and began her practice as the Estate Tax Clerk in the Westchester County Surrogate's Court. In 1978 she joined the Ridgefield firm of Crehan and Fricke and has been a sole practitioner since April 2000. 

     She is married to Paul Bracken, a professor at Yale University. They have three children: Kathleen, who lives in Latham, New York and is Director of College Counseling at the Doane Stuart School in Albany, New York; James, who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan; and Margaret, who lives in Manhattan and works in Brooklyn. In her spare time, Nanette enjoys gardening, travel, golf, dude ranching and reading. 

     Attorney Bracken encourages her clients to "pick up the phone and call" her if they have questions. She does not charge her regular clients for this service. In fact, she prefers that her clients stay in touch with her and ask her opinion before they obligate themselves legally. This "look before you leap" approach saves her clients money and worry. It is generally more costly to remedy a problem than to avoid it in the first place.