Protect your land and
future by:
•
creating a will to designate
who should get your interest
in your land,
•
talking with your family
about keeping the land in
the family, and
•
making sure the property
taxes are paid on the family
land.
For more information, contact
UNC Center for Civil Rights
100 Ridge Road
CB 3380
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
http://www.law.unc.edu/civilrights
(919) 962-0226
Land Loss Prevention Project, serving
low—resource landowners
P.O. Box 179
Durham, NC 27702
http://www.landloss.org
1-800-672-5839
Sources
•
•
•
The Land Loss Fund,
http://hometown.aol.com/tillery/llf.html
Thomas W. Mitchell, From Reconstruction to
Deconstruction: Undermining Black
Landownership, Political Independence, and
Community Through Partition Sales of Tenancies
in Common, 95 NW. U.L. Rev. 505
Federation of Southern Cooperatives,
http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com
This brochure is not intended to provide
legal advice on a specific legal problem
nor does it substitute for the advice of an
attorney. Contacting the organizations
above does not create an agreement to
provide legal representation.
Stop the Rapid
Loss of Land
Owned by
African
Americans
In 1910, African Americans
owned 15 million acres of land
throughout the South.
Today, Blacks own less than 1
percent of all privately-owned
rural land in the U.S.
Low—resource landowners,
regardless of race, face
challenges to land retention.
UNC Center for Civil Rights
and
Land Loss Prevention Project
In the U.S., Blacks collectively own less rural land now than 100 years ago.
Causes of Black Land Loss:
Partition Actions
What is a Partition Action?
What Does this Mean for You?
Partition actions are the leading
If two or more people own a piece of
If you and your family members
cause of the loss of heir property
land as tenants in common and one de-
inherited land from a family mem-
within African - American commu-
cides to sell her portion, she can file a
ber who died without a will, then
nities.
partition action with the court.
you co-own the land as tenants in
common.
Heir property is any land you and
your family inherited from a family
Each family member has a legally dis-
member who died without a will.
tinct interest. Within certain limits,
You and your family members own
each owner has a legal right to use
that land as tenants in common.
and possess the entire property and
Any tenant in common, including
a family member, can potentially
sell his share without having to tell
you and without your permission.
A partition action may be brought
by the family member wishing to
sell his interest or the person who
buys it from him.
In these actions, the land may be
the right to sell their individual in-
physically divided into portions. If the
terest.
owners are not able to agree, any owner
may ask the court to determine how the
land should be divided.
When one co-owner dies, the remaining co-owners do not automatically get that interest. Rather, that
Courts may also order a sale in which the
person’s interest passes to the people
entire property is sold and the proceeds
named in his will or to his heirs if he
are distributed to the owners. This
has no will.
sometimes results in a low sales price for
the land.