Little Law Firm on the Bayou

09/05/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES: THE $10,000 BINDER

Seymour the Law Firm Alligator would like to discuss a particularly well-dressed critter:

The Big Fancy Estate Planning Binder.

Leather-looking cover.

Gold lettering.

Tabs.

So. Many. Tabs.

Enough impressive legal language to make you think somebody personally consulted Thomas Jefferson.

And sometimes a $7-10,000 legal bill attached to it.

Now, before anybody gets their expensive embossed tabs in a wad, estate-planning academies and membership organizations can absolutely provide lawyers with useful things: CLE, drafting programs, forms, practice-management systems and marketing resources.

For a lawyer starting or expanding an estate-planning practice, that may be worth every penny.

But here’s where Seymour starts side-eyeing the binder.

You can buy forms.

You can buy software.

You can buy templates.

You can apparently buy a binder substantial enough to stop a small-caliber projectile.

What you cannot buy in a membership package is years spent standing in Mississippi Chancery Courts learning what actually happens when an estate plan doesn’t work.

My estate-planning documents didn’t start in an academy.

They started with me in a little 10-by-10 office in 2015.

And they grew up with me.

For more than 11 years, I have practiced in the trenches of Chancery Courts throughout Mississippi.

I’ve watched what happens after somebody dies.

I’ve handled probates.

I’ve dealt with property that didn’t transfer the way somebody thought it would.

I’ve seen trusts that weren’t properly funded and plans that looked wonderful right up until somebody actually needed them to WORK.

Every one of those experiences changed the way I practice estate planning.

And that’s why, when somebody walks into my office carrying one of those enormous, pretty binders and asks me to review it, I internally groan just a little.

Because lately, pretty has not been translating into effective.

In the past six months, I’ve reviewed several of these high-dollar plans.

I’ve found trusts that weren’t properly funded.

Redundant documents and provisions.

Pages and pages of expensive-looking legal language.

I’ve even found entire fill-in-the-blank sections THAT WERE STILL BLANK.

Nothing says “peace of mind” quite like paying thousands of dollars for:

__________________________

__________________________

__________________________.

And here’s the part that actually matters.

With only one exception, the plans I’ve personally reviewed would still have required the client’s family to go through an expensive probate.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the lawyer did anything unethical or that every academy-generated plan is bad.

It means a beautiful estate plan that doesn’t accomplish the client’s goals is still a beautiful estate plan that doesn’t accomplish the client’s goals.

The binder is packaging.

The tabs are organization.

The gold lettering is decoration.

The estate plan is what happens when Mama dies on Tuesday and her children walk into a lawyer’s office on Wednesday.

Does the trust actually own what it was supposed to own?

Do the deeds work?

Are the beneficiaries correct?

Does the plan make sense under Mississippi law?

Did somebody actually fill in the blanks?

And most importantly:

Did the lawyer who created it understand what was going to happen when those documents eventually collided with the real world?

Because Chancery Court does not care how pretty your binder is.

Neither does Seymour the litigator.

He’d probably eat the tabs.

Pretty is nice.

Experience is better.

And when it comes to estate planning, I’d much rather hand my clients paperwork shaped by more than a decade of actual Mississippi Chancery Court practice than a bookshelf trophy that looks expensive.

Your family isn’t inheriting the binder.

They’re inheriting the consequences of what’s inside it.

09/03/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES:
DOGS MAY GET AWAY WITH IT. GROWN HUMANS, NEVER.

Every once in a while, I encounter a news story that causes me to stop what I am doing, reread it, and wonder whether perhaps I have misunderstood the English language.

This week, Fox News reported that a 39-year-old California man—whom the media has rather unfortunately dubbed the “serial butt-sniffer”—was arrested again after police alleged he was crouching near female shoppers and smelling them in two different stores.

According to the report, this gentleman is a registered s*x offender with previous similar arrests dating back to 2021, including a 2023 incident at a Barnes & Noble that was caught on video. Police reportedly arrested him on suspicion of violating his parole, and Fox News reported that he was being held without bail.

Those are the reported allegations. He is, of course, entitled to all of the constitutional protections afforded to anyone accused of a crime.

Now that we have handled the professional lawyer portion of today’s program:

Sir.

No.

Dogs may occasionally get away with sniffing somebody’s backside.

GROWN HUMANS MAY NOT.

I really did not anticipate this being a legal distinction we needed to discuss in 2026, but apparently The Critter Chronicles continues to provide important public services.

When Honey meets another dog, she may engage in certain introductory customs that would be considered completely unacceptable at Capone’s on a Friday night.

This is because Honey is a dog.

Honey does not understand social boundaries.

Honey has never read a criminal statute.

Honey is not on parole.

Honey also has no constitutional right to counsel, although based upon some of the nonsense she has pulled at my house, she could probably use it.

Human beings, however, are expected to conduct themselves somewhat differently.

There is a fairly substantial amount of daylight between:

“Fido, quit sniffing that dog.”

and

“Sir, please step away from the woman in the Barnes & Noble.”

One is ordinary canine behavior.

The other may result in police involvement, criminal charges, parole consequences and an extraordinarily uncomfortable conversation with your lawyer.

And lawyers already have enough uncomfortable conversations.

I have practiced law long enough to know that human beings are capable of making some spectacularly questionable decisions.

People get angry.

People get drunk.

People get jealous.

People get carried away.

People occasionally have moments when their common sense apparently packs a suitcase, leaves the state and refuses to provide a forwarding address.

But adulthood comes with an unfortunate legal reality:

You generally do not get the same grace we give the family dog.

If Honey steals a sandwich off the kitchen counter, I can point at her and say:

“Did you do this?”

Honey will immediately lower her head, avoid eye contact and look so pitiful that within approximately seven minutes somebody in my house will give her another snack.

Try that strategy at an arraignment and see how it works out for you.

And if you are already on probation or parole, your margin for creative decision-making becomes considerably smaller.

Court orders, probation conditions and parole conditions are not suggestions.

They are not recommendations.

They are certainly not invitations to test exactly how much foolishness the criminal justice system is willing to tolerate before somebody comes looking for you.

This particular case is in California, so I am not attempting to analyze California criminal law from my little office on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

I am simply offering a broader piece of legal advice that I believe travels quite well across state lines:

Keep your hands to yourself.

Respect other people’s personal space.

Follow your court orders.

Follow your probation or parole conditions.

And if you suddenly find yourself contemplating conduct that would normally cause someone to yell,

“BAD DOG! STOP THAT!”

perhaps reconsider.

Dogs occasionally get away with things because they are dogs.

Adult humans have frontal lobes, driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers and, occasionally, bond conditions.

Society expects more from us.

Apparently, some days, we need reminding.

THE LITTLE LAW FIRM ON THE BAYOU
Seymour Law Firm, PLLC

Representing human beings on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The dogs generally know when to quit.

09/01/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES: FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, NOW WITH VENOM

There are certain things I have come to expect at a high school football game.

Teenagers painted in school colors.

A marching band playing loudly in the stands.

Cheerleaders.

Concession-stand nachos capable of surviving a nuclear event.

Parents screaming coaching instructions from Row 14 as though the actual coaching staff has simply been waiting for their input.

What I generally do NOT expect is:

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s game. Please remain alert for rattlesnakes.”

Yet here we are.

Apparently, a high school football game in Riviera, Texas, recently came with an honest-to-God rattlesnake advisory because there had been an increased presence of rattlesnakes in the area.

Texas looked at heat, humidity, teenage boys slamming into each other at full speed, and the ordinary possibility of a fistfight in the parking lot and apparently said:

“You know what this needs?

Venom.”

I HAVE QUESTIONS

First and foremost:

What exactly is the protocol here?

Because if I am sitting in the bleachers eating a hot dog and somebody says:

“Snake!”

I am not stopping to determine whether the snake is venomous.

I am not identifying markings.

I am not Googling “Texas snake species.”

I am abandoning the hot dog, the football game, and possibly several people I previously claimed to love.

Sorry, Philip.

Every woman has her limits.

Mine apparently begins somewhere around “rattlesnake underneath the home-team bleachers.”

AND, OF COURSE, THE LAWYER IN ME HAS LIABILITY QUESTIONS

Because apparently I am incapable of seeing a rattlesnake advisory without immediately ruining everybody’s fun by thinking about premises liability.

Generally speaking, schools and other property owners have duties concerning reasonably foreseeable hazards on property under their control. Exactly what duty exists—and whether reasonable precautions were taken—depends heavily on the circumstances and applicable state law.

But when your pregame announcement includes the words “increased presence of rattlesnakes,” I feel like we have officially moved past a purely hypothetical danger.

At that point, somebody somewhere has apparently seen enough rattlesnakes to decide the public needs a warning.

And now my lawyer brain has taken over:

What did the school know?

When did it know it?

What precautions were reasonable?

Were the areas around the stadium inspected?

Was vegetation controlled?

Was there a response plan if somebody encountered or was bitten by a snake?

And perhaps most importantly:

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR REMOVING THE RATTLESNAKE?

Because I can tell you right now who is not.

Me.

Absolutely not.

I went to law school for many reasons, one of which, apparently now, was specifically to avoid professions requiring me to pick up venomous reptiles.

Lawyers historically attend law school to avoid higher math.

I personally would like to now add rattlesnake removal to that list.

THIS ALSO CREATES AN INTERESTING PARENTING DECISION

Your child has been practicing football since July.

He has worked hard.

Tonight is the big game.

Then the school sends out:

“Please use extra caution due to the increased presence of rattlesnakes.”

Now Mama has to decide whether supporting her child requires entering a reptile combat zone.

Some mothers will immediately grab the stadium blanket.

Some will grab boots and a flashlight.

Some will tell Daddy:

“You better video the whole thing.”

I am not judging any of these women.

Particularly the third one.

MISSISSIPPI, BEFORE WE LAUGH TOO HARD

We really don’t have room to talk.

We have alligators.

We have cottonmouths.

We have rattlesnakes.

We have copperheads.

We have wild hogs.

We have coyotes.

We have bears wandering around in places where people suddenly discover Mississippi has bears.

And on the Gulf Coast, we have enough assorted wildlife that occasionally I look into the backyard and think:

“Well. That’s new.”

So this could absolutely happen here.

Although I firmly believe Mississippi would handle it somewhat differently.

We would issue the warning.

Somebody’s uncle would immediately announce that he knows exactly how to catch a rattlesnake.

Three other men would disagree about the proper method.

Someone would produce equipment from the bed of a pickup truck.

Nobody would leave.

The concession stand would continue selling hamburgers.

And kickoff would occur precisely as scheduled.

Because SEC country has conditioned us to accept a frankly unreasonable amount of personal risk in connection with football.

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES OFFICIAL SAFETY RULE

If I encounter a dangerous critter at a football game, I have a very simple policy:

I am not touching it.

I am not antagonizing it.

I am not taking a selfie with it.

And I am absolutely not standing around while somebody’s cousin Earl demonstrates something he saw on YouTube.

I am backing away and notifying somebody who actually knows what they’re doing.

I recommend everyone else do the same.

This rule applies equally well to rattlesnakes, alligators, wild hogs, and certain football fans after a questionable fourth-quarter officiating call.

Some hazards simply cannot be reasoned with.

08/31/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES:
YOUR LITTLE ANGEL MAY COME WITH A BILL

Seymour the Law Firm Alligator would like to discuss something every Mississippi parent should probably know:

Sometimes when Junior acts a fool, Junior is not the only one who may have a problem.

Imagine this:

Little Boudreaux Gator is 16.

Little Boudreaux gets mad at his neighbor.

Little Boudreaux decides the appropriate conflict-resolution technique is to take a baseball bat to the neighbor’s mailbox, flowerpots and lawn decorations.

Mama Gator wakes up the next morning, looks outside and says:

“Why is there a deputy standing in my driveway?”

Well, Mama. We need to talk.

MISSISSIPPI ACTUALLY HAS A PARENTAL LIABILITY LAW

Under Mississippi Code § 93-13-2, a property owner may recover up to $5,000, plus necessary court costs, from the parents of a minor who is over 10 and under 18 when that child maliciously and willfully damages or destroys someone else’s property.

And that statute does not necessarily mean $5,000 is the end of the story. The law specifically says the statutory remedy is in addition to other actions that may otherwise exist.

Translation:

“Boudreaux did it, not me” may be factually correct.

It may not, however, be financially comforting.

BUT WAIT. THERE’S MORE.

Mississippi does not generally make parents automatically responsible for every tort committed by their children simply because they are the parents.

But parents can potentially face liability based on their own negligent supervision.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has explained that parents have a duty to exercise reasonable care in supervising their minor children to prevent reasonably foreseeable intentional injuries to others. A negligent-supervision claim requires proof of duty, breach, causation and damages.

The big issue is usually foreseeability.

If your child has previously engaged in similar dangerous or malicious behavior, and you knew or reasonably should have known about it, simply ignoring the problem can become much more significant. The Mississippi Supreme Court has said that merely failing to control a child is not enough; there generally must be notice of prior conduct sufficiently similar to put the parent on notice of the child’s propensity to cause harm.

In other words:

If Boudreaux has never done anything remotely like this before, that is one situation.

If Boudreaux has already destroyed three mailboxes, chased the neighbor with a shovel, threatened everybody on Snapchat, and Mama’s parenting strategy has been:

“Well, you know how teenagers are…”

We may need a longer appointment.

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES MORAL OF THE STORY

Children make mistakes.

Teenagers occasionally make spectacularly stupid mistakes.

But when parents know their child has developed dangerous tendencies and fail to take reasonable steps to address them, the consequences may not remain exclusively Junior’s problem.

And when Junior intentionally destroys somebody else’s property, Mississippi law provides a specific avenue for holding parents financially responsible in certain circumstances.

So teach your little gators well.

Because one day that precious baby who “would never do something like that” may be standing beside a freshly demolished mailbox holding the exact baseball bat used to demolish it.

And Seymour has learned that deputies are remarkably unimpressed by the sentence:

“He’s really a good kid.”

General legal information only. Every situation is different, and this post is not legal advice.

08/30/2026

Katrina: We Rebuilt. We Healed. But We Didn’t Forget.

Twenty-one years ago, Hurricane Katrina changed the Mississippi Gulf Coast forever.

And she changed me.

I found two email messages recently.

One was an update sent to me after the storm, when communication with the Coast was nearly impossible.

It told me who had a house, who didn’t, who had water in their home, and simply: we survived.

The other was something I wrote shortly afterward.

At the time, I was living in Texas.

After two days without hearing from my family in Biloxi, my now ex-husband and I loaded a U-Haul with food, water, medicine and supplies and headed toward Mississippi.

Our neighbors in Texas heard what we were doing and started bringing things to our garage.

Bags of produce.

Dried beans.

Water.

Flashlights.

Medicine.

By the time we left, that U-Haul was packed as tightly as we could get it.

When we finally reached the Coast, several homes in my family were gone.

But my family was alive.

And everywhere I looked, people were helping people.

There was grief beyond anything I had experienced.

There was destruction that was difficult to comprehend.

But there was also this extraordinary determination that seemed to rise out of the mud and debris right alongside us.

That experience changed the direction of my professional life.

After Katrina, I went into risk management in hospitals.

I had watched hospitals, businesses, governments and entire communities essentially have to recreate themselves from the ground up.

I became fascinated with the questions we often don’t ask until something terrible has already happened:

What happens if this fails?

What happens if this person dies?

Who has authority to make decisions?

Where are the records?

What happens to the property?

What happens to the business?

What happens to the family?

And most importantly: what could we have done before the crisis to make what comes afterward a little easier?

Those questions followed me from hospital risk management back into the practice of law.

It’s one of the reasons probate means so much to me today.

It’s one of the reasons risk management is still woven into the way I practice law.

And it’s absolutely one of the reasons I believe so strongly in estate planning.

A good estate plan isn’t really about documents sitting in a folder somewhere.

It’s about preparing for the day when life suddenly doesn’t look anything like it did the day before.

Katrina taught me that the unthinkable actually happens.

In 2012, seven years after Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I moved home.

And even then, Katrina came with me.

When I looked at property to purchase what would eventually become our Little Law Firm on the Bayou, I asked a question that people who aren’t from here might find strange:

Where did the waterline reach during Katrina?

When Philip and I looked at our home in Gulf Hills, I asked it again.

Where was the Katrina waterline?

Twenty-one years later, that storm is still part of the way many of us on the Mississippi Gulf Coast think.

I love living here.

I love our people.

I love the water.

I love the communities that stretch across this Coast.

I love the stubbornness and humor and generosity that make this place home.

But if you lived through Katrina—or loved people who did—there is still a shadow.

Every hurricane season, it reaches forward from the past and puts just a little fear and uncertainty into the future.

We know what can happen.

We have seen it.

But there is something else Katrina taught me about Mississippi, and particularly about the Mississippi Gulf Coast:

We don’t let fear dictate our lives or our choices.

We didn’t abandon our Coast because a storm destroyed it.

We stood up.

We dug out.

We helped our neighbors.

We mourned the people we lost.

We rebuilt our homes, hospitals, businesses, churches and communities.

We healed.

And we kept living.

Maybe that is what preparedness really means.

It isn’t believing you can prevent every terrible thing from happening.

You can’t.

It’s doing what you can today so that if the terrible thing comes tomorrow, the people you love have a path forward.

That lesson has followed me from Katrina, to hospital risk management, to probate court, to estate planning, and all the way back home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Twenty-one years later, I still believe what I wrote after Katrina:

In times of trouble, you don’t see us running away.

You see us standing shoulder to shoulder, bearing the burden together.

We rebuilt.

We healed.

But we didn’t forget.

08/25/2026

There are some people who become famous because of their talent.

And then there are people who use that fame to make the world around them a little better.

Dolly Parton has always been both.

Of course, there is the music—the unmistakable voice, the songwriting, the rhinestones, the hair, the humor, and a career that has touched generations.

But what I admire most about Dolly has very little to do with the stage.

It is what she has chosen to do with the platform she was given.

She has invested in her community. She has stepped forward when people needed help.

She has championed early childhood education and put books into the hands of millions of children through her Imagination Library.

She has supported music, education, healthcare, and people facing difficult times.

And she has managed to do something increasingly rare:

She lifts people up without needing to push someone else down.

She reminds us that success isn’t just measured by what we accomplish, what we own, or how many people know our name.

Sometimes the best measure of success is simply this:

What did you do with what you were given?

Who did you help along the way?

Did your community become a little better because you were part of it?

May we all strive to be a little more like Dolly—community-minded, willing to offer a hand to lift someone up rather than push someone down, and committed to giving the next generation a better start through early education, reading, and music.

You don’t have to have Dolly’s money, Dolly’s voice, or Dolly’s hair to make a difference.

You just have to look around, see where you’re needed, and decide to help.

May we all leave our little corner of the world better than we found it.

Thank you, Dolly, for showing us how beautifully that can be done.

08/25/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19Lh35KpBy/

08/14/2026

Well, Birthday Blood Drive 2026 is officially in the books — and apparently we don’t know how to do anything small around here.

Sponsored by Seymour Law Firm and The Demoran Realty Group, today started as a way to celebrate a couple of birthdays and turned into something pretty darn special.

We had 23 donors give blood today, and another 7 people who were ready and willing to donate but we simply ran out of time.

They’re now signing up for other local blood drives, which means this little birthday idea will ultimately result in 30 people stepping up to help save lives.

I’ll take that birthday present any day.

We also learned something for next time: GO BIGGER.

Apparently when you invite the community to a birthday party and ask them to bring a pint of blood instead of a present, they actually show up.

So when we do this again, we’re planning to have donors inside the office AND in the Red Cross bloodmobile.

Because naturally, instead of learning to scale back, we learned that we need more chairs.

And yes…there WILL be a next time.

We are already planning our February blood drive.

Stay tuned.

Today was also a little extra special because we got to celebrate Melinda’s 40th birthday and the beginning of my own birthday weekend.

There was a beautiful Gentilly cake, a sandwich tray, fresh-squeezed specialty lemonade from EriQueen’s Lemonade, plenty of laughing, and — because this is Seymour Law Firm — just enough controlled chaos to make things interesting.

And none of it happens without people willing to jump in and help.

Melinda. Mindy. Mary Catherine. Lori. Gabby. Philip. Khari.

Everybody pitched in wherever they were needed — helping donors, handling food, keeping things organized, taking pictures, answering questions, moving things around and generally keeping this circus headed in approximately the right direction.

And Philip even rolled up his sleeve and donated.

I knew keeping him around would eventually pay off.

To every single person who donated, tried to donate, volunteered, helped us set up, kept things moving, picked up food, bought lemonade, shared our posts, encouraged somebody else to come, or simply stopped by to support us:

THANK YOU.

Blood cannot be manufactured.

It has to come from another human being willing to take a little time out of their day and give it.

Today, 23 people did exactly that at our office.

Seven more are going somewhere else to do the same.

That means more blood on the shelves when somebody’s child is injured.

When somebody’s parent needs surgery.

When a cancer patient needs a transfusion.

When an accident happens.

When somebody somewhere is having the worst day of their life and desperately needs a stranger they will probably never meet to have done something incredibly simple.

That’s what today was really about.

The birthdays, cake, sandwiches and lemonade just made saving lives a little more fun.

Thank you to the American Red Cross, EriQueen’s Lemonade, our volunteers, our staff, and this crazy wonderful community for helping Seymour Law Firm and The Demoran Realty Group turn a couple of birthdays into something that mattered.

23 donated.

7 more committed.

2 couldn’t due to low iron and blood pressure issues.

32 people stepping up to give.

Not a bad way to celebrate Melinda turning 40 and me turning 54.

Now…who’s ready for February?

Because apparently we’re doing this again — only BIGGER.

07/06/2026

🎉❤️ Two Birthdays. One Mission. Countless Lives Changed. ❤️🎉

This year, instead of asking for gifts, we're asking our family, friends, clients, and our amazing Mississippi Gulf Coast community to help us celebrate by saving lives.

Join us as we celebrate Melinda's 40th Birthday and Tina's 54th Birthday with an American Red Cross Birthday Blood Drive!

🩸 Friday, August 14, 2026
⏰ 8:00 AM – 2:00 PM
📍 Seymour Law Firm, PLLC
13524 Seymour Lane
Ocean Springs, MS 39564

🎁 Every donor receives a FREE $20 Electronic Amazon Gift Card!

PLUS... every donor will be entered into drawings to win:
🍕 $50 Italy Terrace Gift Card
🥗 $50 St. Martin Nutrition Gift Card
⛳ A Round of Golf at Gulf Hills Golf Club

❤️ Just ONE pint of blood can save up to THREE lives. Your donation could help a child battling cancer, a trauma victim, a surgery patient, or someone facing a medical emergency.

📲 Reserve your donation appointment today by scanning the QR code on the flyer or clicking the link

https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/drive-results?order=DATE&range=10&zipSponsor=SEYMOURLAW

Bring a friend, roll up your sleeve, and help us turn two birthdays into something that truly matters.

Thank you for helping us celebrate with purpose!

07/06/2026