Skipper G. StipeMaas, the executive director, and Delene W. Porter, the chief operating officer, of The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center, Inc. will present and discuss issues with Thomasville community leaders and influencers on heirs property Wednesday, August 28 from 12 noon-1:30 p.m. at the Thomas County Public Library Flipper Room. 

This meeting, which is made possible by a grant from the Williams Family Foundation of Georgia and a matching grant from the Georgia Bar Foundation, will discuss heirs property, the underlying issues with heirs property, and the solutions the Center has developed to address it. The Center works with individuals and communities to bring down the costs of clearing heirs property titles and to stop the perpetuation of heirs property through estate planning.

Heirs property, which can result in tangled titles, is the hidden story behind blight and generational poverty throughout Georgia. In 2017, USDA Forest Service and UGA Carl Vinson researchers identified probable heirs property in 10 non-metro Georgia counties with a total tax appraised value of over two billion dollars ($2,148,951,361), equity that can’t be used. If heirs property in 10 counties represents over $2 billion in locked equity, the total tax appraised value of probable heirs property undermining Georgia’s economy is over $34 billion.

For each piece of heirs property, whether it is a home or a tract of land, there are multiple legal owners (usually descendants in a family), and no single owner can make major decisions for the property without everyone’s agreement. Heirs property, which can be created with or without a will, is equivalent to having a pile of money in a glass box; a family can see their asset but cannot access its equity. For municipalities, this means that billions of dollars in valuable tax-appraised land is owned by a group of individuals where no one person has the legal authority to manage the property in such a way that benefits the family, let alone the tax base.

Co-owners of heirs property have difficulty getting a loan to fix the roof, qualifying for USDA programs to make the land productive, managing timber property to reduce wildfire tinder, qualifying for property tax exemptions, receiving Federal aid after a natural disaster, participating in land conservation programs, or selling the property to convert the asset into funds for other uses. Heirs property is an unstable form of property ownership that inherently affects the relationships of the family owners and limits the family’s ability to access the tools that will help them leverage their real property and build generational wealth.  

The WFFG became aware of the challenge with heirs property to individuals and the COT when citizens were unable to access relief funding after natural disasters because they did not have clear title to their home, and when families were not able to take advantage of federal home improvement grants because of title issues.  

Because the WFFG recognizes heirs property as a growing problem that is difficult and expensive to solve and that impacts the individuals, their neighborhoods and ultimately economic development, the WFFG has partnered with the Center. 

The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center, Inc. is a nonprofit law firm that was founded in 2015 with the mission to increase generational wealth, social justice, and community stability by securing and preserving property rights of Georgians. The Center envisions an end to generational poverty achieved by unlocking these property rights, partnering with housing and land management organizations to prevent heirs property, and ending blight and abandonment in Georgia’s rural and urban communities. 

The Center works throughout the state with targeted outreach in south Georgia and Atlanta. The Center currently has offices throughout the dtate and nine staff members: six attorneys, two community advocates, and a social worker. 

The Center is the only nonprofit of its kind in Georgia and is positioned to assess, remediate, and prevent heirs property while also providing financial asset education around home and land ownership. This holistic technical assistance is needed by and provided to individual landowners, municipalities, and nonprofits with the sole purpose of untangling title to unlock the economic and conservation benefits of real property ownership. 

Since 2015, the Center has provided legal representation and closed 330 matters. The Center has conducted eight wills clinics and completed 148 estate plans for clients. The Center has completed 307 community outreach programs, trainings and stakeholder meetings in 45 counties and provided information and educational materials to over 10,500 individuals.

Today, the Center has 141 open title clearing and estate planning matters involving properties in 46 counties with a total tax assessed value of $12.44 million.

The City of Thomasville has estimated that up to 20 percent of the properties in the city are Heirs Property. The COT also believes that the major cause of blight and dilapidated housing in Thomasville is heirs property; because no one single individual owns the house, no one person wants to be responsible to maintain it. It is estimated that 10 percent of the Thomasville housing stock is deemed substandard or dilapidated (470 houses that have been without power for over three months and 300 with power).  

Additional information about the Center and its work can be found at: https://www.gaheirsproperty.org/

For additional information about this event on August 28, contact:Alston P. Watt, executive director, The Williams Family Foundation of Georgia at (229) 228-1828 or Delene Porter, chief operating officer, the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center, at (706) 424-7557.