Heirs’ Property Legal Morass

Black families are still vulnerable to exploitation by timber companies, developers. Lack of clear title to African American lands affects logging, affordable housing and ability of families to accumulate wealth.
By Sydney Clark

Heirs’ property is a Civil War legacy that continues to affect Black families today. In January 1865, Union Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman ordered that 400,000 acres of land that had belonged to supporters of the Confederacy be given to African Americans. In the years after Reconstruction, Black families, many of whom had spent years working in the fields, began buying property — often arid or swampy, but it was theirs. By 1910, according to the Census of Agriculture, African Americans became part of a legal system controlled by whites, died without wills, leaving their land in a status known as heirs’ property — one in which the title remained in the name of the deceased owners, while their descendants inherited only an interest in the land (similar to a share of stock in a company), not the land itself.

It can be a legal nightmare. As family trees grow over generations, the number of descendants can increase exponentially — and that can create a legal morass. The descendants of the original owners often live out of state, and each state sets its own laws about inheritance. “Individual owners have the right to transfer their share to whomever they want,” said Mavis Gragg, director of the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network at the American Forest Foundation. “They can’t transfer the whole property, but they can transfer their share to whomever they want. And that’s where we get into risk of loss, because individual family member-owners will transfer their shares to a third party who is seeking full ownership of the property.” That third party can then force what is known as a partition sale — often at auction — where the heirs receive far less than the full market value of the property. “And so not only are the families losing their ownership of their real estate, but they’re also losing that intergenerational wealth, that economic basis in that real estate,” Gragg said.

Heirs’ property can make families ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous timber companies or developers. Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation in Charleston, South Carolina, said his organization helps historically underserved landowners obtain clear title and reach agreement on the use of their property — often as sustainable timberland. Gragg’s organization, the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network, connects African American property owners to existing networks of forestry support, including federal and state government programs and conservation organizations. Walden recounted how a stranger had knocked on the door of a retired schoolteacher who, with her sisters, was an heirs’ property owner of 500 acres. The stranger offered to purchase timber on the land for $50,000. The schoolteacher contacted his center, which helped to clear the title and determine the actual value of the timber — five times more than had been offered. Because there is no legal record of ownership, “ large-scale timber buyer purchasing timber off heirs’ property is generally not going to happen because of the associated liability,” he said. In a situation like the schoolteacher’s, “invariably folks get low-balled [on price] and come up with only a fraction of what their timber may be worth.”

Heirs’ property can also lead to loss of affordable housing in urban areas, as well as loss of forests. Land can be lost to “predatory development or … a family deciding to develop the property and believing they have no other route to create wealth,” Walden said. Family members often lose their property in a tax sale or to partitioning, resulting in the replacement of trees with concrete, Walden said. In urban areas, family homes are being sold through partition actions. “When these families are displaced, they then have to find new housing,” Gragg said.

It’s not just a Southern problem. While most heirs’ property in the southeastern United States, many descendants of the original owners dispersed up and down the Eastern Seaboard, according to Gragg. (See this map of heirs’ properties in North Carolina.) As a lawyer tracking down family members, she said, “it was very common for me to have to source documents from New Haven, Connecticut, Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, for a property that’s in North Carolina.”

Speakers:
Mavis Gragg, Director, Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network, American Forest Foundation
Josh Walden, Chief Operating Officer, Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation

This program was funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.

Transcript and resources: https://nationalpress.org/topic/heirs...
NPF website: https://nationalpress.org/