Louisiana Articles & Resources - Hampton Law Firm

Click the image to subscribe to Hampton Law Firm A collection of thoughts that didn’t make it to the blog. The first night I came back, my daughter found the love notes. There is something particularly cruel about discovering betrayal through a child’s innocent hands. She was not searching for evidence. She did not understand that certain drawers hold more than paper or that a few lines of handwriting can suddenly rearrange everything an adult thought she knew. She simply fou

Click the image to shop our products! A collection of thoughts that didn't make it to the blog. People have a tendency to think that relationships end because of one spectacular event. They imagine a screaming match, a dramatic betrayal, or one moment so obvious that everyone involved immediately knows it's over. I've learned it usually isn't that simple. Sometimes the relationship ends years before either person is willing to admit it. Sometimes the evidence isn't hidden in

Click the image to subscribe to Hampton Law A collection of thoughts that didn't make it to the blog. I've spent enough time in courtrooms to know that reality rarely unfolds the way people imagine it does. Most hearings don't end with dramatic speeches or shocking confessions. Usually they end with everyone gathering their files, exchanging a few polite words, and walking toward the parking lot wondering what they're having for lunch. This one was different. I had just finis

Click the image to subscribe to Hampton Law Firm! NOTE 001: BEFORE WE BEGIN A collection of thoughts that didn't make it to the blog. If you've spent any time reading my website, you already know I enjoy writing. Most of what you'll find here is intentional. It has a purpose. It's researched, organized, edited, and usually answers a legal question or explores a topic that I think is worth discussing. Those are blog articles. This isn't that. Over the years, I've discovered th

EDITOR’S NOTE: REVISION AND ACCOUNTABILITY July 31, 2026 This article has been materially revised after publication. I continue to stand by the core factual account, opinions, perspective, and conclusions expressed in the original version. These revisions are not a retraction, an admission that the central account was false, or a response to intimidation. A copy of the original publication has been preserved in my private records. It is available upon request, I simply choose

Every once in a while, a song comes along that isn't really about the lyrics. It's about the principle hiding underneath them. Ella Langley's "Gotta Be Tough" caught my attention because, stripped of the country music and relationship drama, it's really about something much bigger. Consequences. Not the kind a judge hands down. Those are easy to identify. They come with statutes, courtrooms, and paperwork. I'm talking about the kind life hands down. The kind nobody can appeal

There is a remarkable kind of confidence required to publicly accuse someone of crimes, corruption, favoritism, and special treatment based on a report you have apparently never read. It is not the useful kind of confidence—the kind earned through preparation, evidence, or even basic familiarity with the facts. It is the louder variety, usually found in people who mistake repetition for proof and Facebook engagement for due diligence. For months, a version of events has been

For most of my career, I believed Louisiana’s child-protection system existed for one purpose: to protect children. I still believe many of the people working within that system genuinely entered the profession wanting to do exactly that. What I no longer believe is that the system consistently distinguishes between a child facing an actual emergency and a family caught beneath an allegation that should have been investigated before the government began tearing lives apart. I

I don’t know your name, and maybe I never will. Maybe you’ve only known him a few weeks. Maybe it has already been months. Maybe you are still telling yourself the two of you are just friends, or maybe you have already decided you have finally met the person you were always supposed to find. I don’t know where you are in the story, but I know where stories like ours usually begin. They rarely begin when a woman is perfectly happy and completely fulfilled. They begin when some

Tonight, my beautiful three-year-old daughter and I are lying together on the couch in our home. It is just the two of us. She is warm and sleepy and perfect, curled up beside me in the place where her daddy should be. We would both love nothing more than for him to be here with us. Not because we are incapable without him. Not because I do not know how to take care of us. Not because she is unloved. We want him here because this is his family. This is the home we built. This

If you’ve been following this Coffee Shop Series, we’ve talked about what a usufruct is, who generally has the right to use property, who owns the naked ownership, who may be responsible for certain expenses, and why Louisiana seems determined to invent legal words that sound like they should come with a pronunciation guide. Now let’s answer the question that naturally follows. Why do so many Louisiana parents intentionally use usufructs in their estate plans? The answer is b

Coffee Shop Series Last time we sat down over coffee, we answered the question I hear more than any other. "Who owns the house?" As you may remember, the answer wasn't nearly as simple as most people expect. In Louisiana, a surviving spouse may have a usufruct over property while the children own what the law calls the naked ownership. That means one person has the right to use and enjoy the property while someone else owns it. Once people finally understand that concept, the

One of my favorite parts of practicing law is realizing that lawyers have an incredible talent for taking something that actually makes perfect sense and wrapping it in words that sound like they were invented during a fever dream. "Usufruct" is Exhibit A. Seriously. If I walked into a coffee shop and asked ten people what a usufruct was, I would probably get answers ranging from "Isn't that a medication they advertise during the evening news?" to "Sounds like a dinosaur." I

If you had asked me in law school what legal issues I expected to spend my career arguing, this one would not have made the list. Murder, drug trafficking, and complicated fraud cases would have made sense. Standing in a courtroom discussing whether someone should potentially spend years at hard labor because of a Facebook account somehow escaped every criminal-law textbook I ever opened. Yet here we are. Over the past several months, I have found myself handling what I have

A Note Before You Read This is one of the most personal stories I have ever written because, until now, I have never really told it outside the circle of people who were there. For twenty four years, I have kept it almost entirely inside that small group and inside myself. It was simply one of the most genuine connections of my life, lived quietly in plain sight during one unforgettable summer and carried in different forms for years afterward. Writing it now feels less like

I was not enough for him. I know everybody wants to rush in and correct that sentence before it finishes making them uncomfortable, but I am not saying I was not enough as a woman, a mother, a lawyer, a friend, or a functioning member of society, although “functioning” has admittedly been used generously at certain points. I am saying that in his eyes, for the life he wanted and the woman he wanted beside him, I was not enough. He knew me closely, loved me for a period of tim

People ask me what my type is quite often these days, and I have discovered I am terrible at answering because the older I get, the less interested I am in describing a man and the more interested I am in describing what happens when two people with entirely too much personality get left alone together. Everybody expects a neat little checklist: tall, funny, successful, honest, good with children, emotionally available, and presumably capable of assembling furniture without t

Blanche is not her real name. If I used the name we have called her around the office for years, half the people reading this would know exactly who she was before I made it past the first page. She was one of my dad’s very first clients, and he represented her for decades while she and her husband bought property, sold property, loaned money, and helped people buy land because they believed in them. Somewhere along the way, she stopped being simply a client and became part o

Supporting the badge doesn’t mean defending everyone who wears it. I remember the blue dress I wore when I was sworn in as a prosecutor. I was pregnant with my son, JB, and a close family friend who had just been elected to the Court of Appeals administered the oath. I was so damn proud that day. I felt like I was following in my daddy’s footsteps and, in a different way, my uncle’s footsteps too. My father had devoted his career to prosecution. My uncle was a law enforcement

I have two friends who are older than me and both attorneys. There is nothing nefarious here. They are legitimate, solid friends, mentors, and longtime family friends. Outside of my father, they are probably the two people in the legal profession I trust most. They are also completely different people. One of them is going to tell me the truth. He will absolutely say, “Judith, I think this is a terrible idea. I think this is going to end badly, and I think you are probably go