Richard Ducote

Richard Ducote, an attorney licensed in Louisiana (1978) and Pennsylvania (2009), has been one of the nation’s leading child abuse/domestic violence litigators and law reformers for 39 years. He received a B.S. in psychology from Tulane in 1974. Immediately following his law school graduation from Loyola in New Orleans in 1978, which he earned while serving as a juvenile probation officer in the Jefferson Parish Juvenile Court, he created a specialized program to provide and train attorneys for abused and neglected children. That project, which developed the Tulane University School of Law Juvenile Law Clinic, was one of only four in the country nationally recognized by the federal government for its innovative court improvements.

In Louisiana during the early 1980’s, as an appointed special district attorney in 19 parishes, he tried child abuse/ termination of parental rights cases in 40 courts. Through his efforts in the courtroom, social service agency offices, and the legislature, the Louisiana foster care system for the first time moved hundreds of forgotten children into adoptive homes. In 1984, he began his nationwide focus on complex child custody cases involving domestic violence and child abuse. In 1991, he drafted for successful enactment the Louisiana Post-Separation Family Violence Relief Act (La. R.S. 9:361-369), the first state law barring abusive parents from serving as custodians and forcing them to pay all costs and attorney’s fees. This law, which has been called model legislation by the Harvard Law Review, has been replicated in many states and foreign countries. He has written over a dozen other child welfare /child custody statutes passed in Louisiana and other states.

Mr. Ducote has been an ardent critic of due process flaws in family courts, the inappropriate delegation of authority to guardians ad litem, and incompetent mental health evaluators and discredited theories in custody cases. He was appointed to the clinical psychiatry faculty at LSU Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.