Foundational Black Americans: Here’s How to Get Your Family’s Land out of Heirs Property
As we enter into this renaissance of remembering and healing amongst the black Americans, nation within a nation, we are rediscovering our connection to these lands of North America. This should come as no surprise to anyone. As a matter of fact, at the turn of the 20th century black Americans owned the majority of the farmland in America. Unbeknownst to the heirs of said land, much of that land was either lost to what is called “heirs property” or floating around under heirs’ property unclaimed. Heirs property is how many white Americans and the United States government managed to steal millions of acres of land, legally. Put simply, when our elders died intestate or without wills, real property went into their estate as heirs rights, meaning all the heirs owned a fraction of the real property. The problem with this structure is that, if even one of the heirs wants to sell their small fraction of ownership, they can force a sale of the property, equally owned by the other heirs, through a process called partition action. Black Americans disproportionately own the most heirs property in America due to failure to create estate plans, but that is about to change.
There is a movement of people on social media platforms such as Tik Tok educating black Americans about their longing standing ties to these lands. This movement has become both ubiquitous and necessary because of the Africanization of black American education disconnecting and severing their connection with their current homeland, America. In fact, most are discovering that their homeland of America has been the longstanding home for most of their ancestors– which is how black Americans amassed so much land in the first place. The fact of the matter is that we have been here for a very, very long time. Thanks to the movement I will loosely call, “We Were Already Here”, black Americans are finding about lands that were owned, stolen, forced sale or simply sitting idly in heirs property. Genealogy has proven a crucial first step in this process. However, it is not a requirement as many black Americans will discover that their elders own/ed property in their recent family history which may also exist as heirs property.
Fact of the matter is, we are awakening and we are remembering our elders and our connection to the land. As America struggles for its second wind, black Americans are defiantly and boldly rebuilding their nation within a nation. In order to this successfully, land and protection of the land in the proper legal structures will be of utmost importance. As the largest owners of heirs property, black Americans must research if there is any heirs property within their families and move with urgency to organize the family to get the property into the appropriate legal structure.
Our journey is to create a series to instruct the true heirs of America, on how to reclaim their family’s land. For those of you who already know there is heirs property in your family, you are halfway there. Next comes organization of the family’s rightful heirs, creation of a trust, and then a consensus amongst family members to transfer ownership of the property into a trust.
On this site, we will outline the steps to transfer property out of heirs rights. It is not difficult at all but does require money and the ability to organize family members and even friends. Stay tuned.