1. THIS
IS
A
PRELIMINARY
DRAFT.
DO
NOT
CITE
OR
CIRCULATE
WITHOUT
THE
AUTHORS’
CONSENT.
ACCOUNTING
FOR
HEIRS’
PROPERTY
IN
PRIVATE
LAND
CONSERVATION
PLANNING:
A
CASE
STUDY
IN
RURAL
GEORGIA
Bryn
Elise
Murphy*
Master
of
Environmental
Management
Candidate
Yale
School
of
Forestry
and
Environmental
Studies
195
Prospect
Street
New
Haven,
CT
06511
Phone:
770.880.7863
Email:
bryn.murphy@yale.edu
Cassandra
Johnson
Gaither
Research
Social
Scientist
USDA
Forest
Service
Southern
Research
Station
320
Green
Street
Athens,
GA
30602
Phone:
706.559.4270
Email:
cjohnson09@fs.fed.us
Web:
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/staff/306
J.
Scott
Pippin
Public
Service
Assistant
Strategic
Operations
and
Planning
Assistance
University
of
Georgia
Carl
Vinson
Institute
of
Government
201
N
Milledge
Avenue
Athens,
GA
30602
Phone:
706.542.3250
Email:
jspippin@uga.edu
Web:
http://www.cviog.uga.edu/faculty-­‐staff/pippins
Shana
Jones
Planning
and
Environmental
Services
Unit
Program
Manager
Strategic
Operations
and
Planning
Assistance
University
of
Georgia
Carl
Vinson
Institute
of
Government
201
N
Milledge
Avenue
Athens,
GA
30602
Phone:
706.542.3641
Email:
shanaj@uga.edu
Web:
http://www.cviog.uga.edu/faculty-­‐staff/jonessh
*corresponding
author

2. ACCOUNTING
FOR
HEIRS’
PROPERTY
IN
PRIVATE
LAND
CONSERVATION
PLANNING:
A
CASE
STUDY
IN
RURAL
GEORGIA
WORD
COUNT
2,240
ABSTRACT
Heirs’
property
is
land
jointly
owned
by
the
heirs
of
a
landowner
who
died
without
a
will
or
probate.
Because
each
heir
holds
an
undivided
interest
in
the
entire
property,
heirs’
property
is
especially
vulnerable
to
land
management
issues
and
to
land
loss
through
tax
sales
or
court-­‐ordered
partitions.
Although
very
little
research
exists
on
the
extent
of
heirs’
property
nationwide,
early
studies
suggest
that
heirs’
property
accounts
for
an
appreciable
portion
of
private
land
in
the
southern
United
States.
Despite
the
likely
prevalence
of
heirs’
property,
existing
private
land
conservation
planning
and
outreach
strategies
typically
do
not
readily
accommodate
landowners
with
clouded
title
or
relatively
low
wealth.
To
gauge
the
extent
to
which
the
private
land
conservation
community
may
have
an
interest
in
adapting
these
existing
planning
and
outreach
strategies
to
better
engage
heirs’
property
landowners,
a
GIS-­‐
based
spatial
analysis
of
one
county
in
rural
Georgia
was
used
1)
to
identify
likely
heirs’
properties
and
2)
to
estimate
the
extent
to
which
these
likely
heirs’
properties
overlap
with
high-­‐value
natural
lands.
The
results
indicate
extensive
overlap
between
likely
heirs’
property
and
high-­‐value
natural
lands:
for
all
non-­‐corporate
residential
and
agricultural
parcels
in
the
county,
31%
of
the
county’s
total
land
acreage,
30%
of
the
county’s
total
prime
farmland
soils,
and
40%
of
the
county’s
undeveloped
landcover,
respectively,
were
found
on
likely
heirs’
properties.
These
results
suggest
that
private
land
conservation
practitioners
in
the
South
may
wish
to
begin
adapting
existing
strategies
to
better
serve
heirs’
property
landowners
-­‐
or
risk
passing
up
valuable
partnerships.

3. ACCOUNTING
FOR
HEIRS’
PROPERTY
IN
PRIVATE
LAND
CONSERVATION
PLANNING:
A
CASE
STUDY
IN
RURAL
GEORGIA
ABSTRACT
Heirs’
property
is
a
problematic
form
of
land
ownership
in
which
land
jointly
owned
by
the
heirs
of
a
landowner
who
died
without
a
will
or
probate.
Because
each
heir
holds
an
undivided
interest
in
the
entire
property,
heirs’
property
is
especially
vulnerable
to
land
management
issues
and
to
land
loss
through
tax
sales
or
court-­‐ordered
partitions.
Although
very
little
research
exists
on
the
extent
of
heirs’
property
nationwide,
early
studies
suggest
that
heirs’
property
accounts
for
an
appreciable
portion
of
private
land
in
the
southern
United
States.
Despite
the
likely
prevalence
of
heirs’
property,
existing
private
land
conservation
planning
and
outreach
strategies
typically
do
not
readily
accommodate
landowners
with
clouded
title
or
relatively
low
wealth.
To
gauge
the
extent
to
which
the
private
land
conservation
community
may
have
an
interest
in
adapting
these
existing
planning
and
outreach
strategies
to
better
engage
heirs’
property
landowners,
a
GIS-­‐based
spatial
analysis
of
one
county
in
rural
Georgia
was
used
1)
to
identify
likely
heirs’
properties
and
2)
to
estimate
the
extent
to
which
these
likely
heirs’
properties
overlap
with
high-­‐value
natural
lands.
The
results
indicate
extensive
overlap
between
likely
heirs’
property
and
high-­‐value
natural
lands:
for
all
non-­‐corporate
residential
and
agricultural
parcels
in
the
county,
31%
of
the
county’s
total
land
acreage,
30%
of
the
county’s
total
prime
farmland
soils,
and
40%
of
the
county’s
undeveloped
landcover,
respectively,
were
found
on
likely
heirs’
properties.
These
results
suggest
that
private
land
conservation
practitioners
in
the
South
may
wish
to
begin
adapting
existing
strategies
to
better
serve
heirs’
property
landowners
-­‐
or
risk
passing
up
valuable
partnerships.
KEYWORDS
Heirs’
property,
intestate
succession,
clouded
title,
rural
landownership,
rural
land
tenure,
prime
farmland
soils,
undeveloped
landcover,
conservation
planning,
spatial
analysis,
GIS,
Georgia,
South

4. Introduction
&
Literature
Review
Heirs’
property
refers
to
“land
that
has
been
passed
down
informally
from
generation
to
generation”,
typically
when
a
landowner
dies
without
a
will
or
probate
and
state
law
automatically
distributes
their
interests
in
any
real
property
to
all
living
heirs
(Georgia
Appleseed
Center
for
Law
and
Justice
2013:
6).
These
heirs
become
“tenants
in
common”
and
each
owns
a
fractional
interest
in
the
entire
property
(rather
than
a
full
interest
in
a
fraction
of
the
property)
(Georgia
Appleseed
Center
for
Law
and
Justice
2013:
6-­‐7).
Over
time,
the
number
of
these
co-­‐tenants
tends
to
increase
while
the
size
of
their
interests
tends
to
decrease
(Georgia
Appleseed
Center
for
Law
and
Justice
2013:
6).
Land
held
as
heirs’
property
is
especially
vulnerable
to
land
management
difficulties
and
even
land
loss.
Heirs’
property
owners
often
find
themselves
ineligible
for
government
land
management
programs,
unable
to
sign
legal
contracts
for
timber
sale,
or
otherwise
blocked
from
productively
and
profitably
managing
their
natural
resources
because
of
the
“clouded”,
fractional,
and
undivided
condition
of
their
title
(Dyer
2007:
50-­‐87).
Heirs’
property
landowners
are
also
especially
vulnerable
to
losing
their
land
through
court-­‐ordered
forced
partition
sales
or
tax
sales
due
to
the
difficulties
associated
with
their
“tenants
in
common”
status
(Dyer
2007;
Dyer
2008;
Mitchell
2014).
Heirs’
property
appears
to
primarily
affect
poor
and
rural
populations
across
the
South
(Georgia
Appleseed
Center
for
Law
and
Justice
2013).
Although
heirs’
property
is
best
documented
among
rural
African
American
populations,
studies
suggest
that
it
may
also
be
prevalent
among
populations
in
Appalachia
(Deaton
2005),
Hispanic
populations
along
the
Texas-­‐Mexico
border
(Mitchell
2014),
Native
American
populations
(Shoemaker
2003),
and
some
urban
populations
(Kluckow
2014).
Although
little
research
exists
on
the
prevalence
or
distribution
of
heirs’
property,
early
studies
suggest
that
heirs’
property
may
account
for
a
third
or
more
of
black-­‐owned,
private
rural
land
in
the
South
(Graber
1978:
276,
Emergency
Land
Fund
(U.S.)
1980:
64).

5. Given
the
suspected
prevalence
of
heirs’
property
in
poor
and
rural
communities
in
the
South
–
and
especially
given
the
difficulty
of
developing
this
land
–
private
land
conservation
planners
might
consider
the
possibility
that
an
appreciable
portion
of
natural
lands
may
be
held
as
heirs’
property
in
these
at-­‐risk
communities.
This
potential
overlap
between
heirs’
property
and
natural
lands
becomes
even
more
relevant
as
public
land
management
agencies,
land
trusts,
and
others
seek
to
expand
their
engagement
with
low-­‐wealth,
minority,
and
other
historically
underserved
communities.
The
following
case
study
offers
a
preliminary
estimate
of
the
extent
of
overlap
between
heirs’
property
and
high-­‐value
natural
lands
–
defined
here
in
terms
of
prime
farmland
soils
and
undeveloped
landcover
–
for
one
county
in
rural
Georgia.
This
work
provides
preliminary
evidence
for
the
relevance
of
heirs’
property
landownership
trends
to
private
land
conservation
planning
in
at-­‐risk
communities
in
the
South
–
and,
ultimately,
for
the
potential
need
to
adapt
existing
conservation
planning
and
outreach
strategies
to
better
serve
heirs’
property
landowners,
or
risk
passing
up
valuable
partnerships.

6. Methods
Case
study
selection
The
purpose
of
this
analysis
was
to
estimate
the
overlap
between
likely
heirs’
properties
and
high-­‐value
natural
lands
in
one
rural
county
where
demographic
and
economic
data
suggest
that
heirs’
property
may
be
prevalent
in
order
to
gauge
the
need
to
account
for
heirs’
property
in
private
land
conservation
planning
and
outreach.
With
this
purpose
in
mind,
Taliaferro
County,
GA,
was
selected
based
on
1)
relatively
high
heirs’
property
likelihood
compared
with
other
counties
in
the
South
(based
on
an
unpublished
analysis
of
the
Center
for
Disease
Control’s
Social
Vulnerability
Index
data
by
the
University
of
Georgia
Carl
Vinson
Institute
of
Government);
2)
high
percentage
prime
farmland
soils
compared
with
other
counties
in
the
state;
3)
high
percentage
undeveloped
landcover
compared
with
other
counties
in
the
state;
4)
regional
trends
toward
urban
development;
and
5)
data
availability.
Given
these
selection
criteria,
the
case
study
results
should
be
considered
roughly
generalizable
to
other
counties
in
the
South
that
are
both
generally
attractive
from
a
private
land
conservation
perspective
and
at
relatively
high
risk
for
heirs’
property.
Data
collection
The
Carl
Vinson
Institute
of
Government
provided
the
county’s
real
property
tax
assessment
tables
and
the
parcel
shapefiles
used
for
likely
heirs’
property
identification
(Taliaferro
County
Tax
Assessor
2013).
Soil
data
was
downloaded
directly
from
the
USDA
Web
Soil
Survey
database
(accessed
July
2015).
Landcover
data
was
downloaded
from
the
UGA
NARSAL
Georgia
Land
Use
Trends
database
(2008).
Note:
Given
the
personal
nature
of
the
real
property
tax
assessment
records
used
in
the
following
methodology
to
identify
likely
heirs’
properties
as
well
as
the
special
vulnerabilities
of
heirs’
property
landownership
(as
outlined
above),
the
parcel-­‐scale
maps
generated
in
the
course
of
the
case
study

7. analysis
have
not
been
included
in
order
to
protect
the
privacy
of
the
landowners
in
the
case
study
county.
Estimating
heirs’
property
likelihood
Data
preparation
included
joining
each
parcel’s
real
property
tax
assessment
tabular
record
to
its
shapefile,
then
selecting
and
exporting
for
further
analysis
only
those
parcels
with
non-­‐corporate
residential
and
agricultural
land
uses.
Then
each
parcel’s
heirs’
property
likelihood
(or,
the
likelihood
that
the
parcel
was
owned
by
multiple
heirs
with
partial
undivided
interests
due
to
intestate
succession)
was
estimated
using
a
draft
methodology
for
heirs’
property
identification
jointly
developed
by
the
USDA
Forest
Service
and
the
Carl
Vinson
Institute
of
Government
(Carl
Vinson
Institute
of
Government,
forthcoming).
Following
this
methodology,
each
parcel
was
scored
based
on
the
presence
or
absence
of
three
indicators
of
heirs’
property
in
its
real
property
tax
assessment
record:
1)
its
last
recorded
sale
was
more
than
thirty
years
ago;
2)
its
owner’s
mailing
address
was
out
of
state;
and
3)
either
its
owner
name
or
owner
mailing
address
fields
included
one
or
more
notations
often
associated
with
heirs’
property.
Parcels
whose
records
included
two
or
more
indicators
were
classified
as
“likely
heirs’
properties”.
Finally,
the
total
acreage
of
these
likely
heirs’
property
parcels,
the
total
acreage
of
all
non-­‐corporate
residential
and
agricultural
parcels,
and
the
ratio
of
these
two
total
acreages
was
calculated.
Table
1:
Parcel
scoring
system
used
to
identify
likely
heirs’
properties.
Each
parcel’s
“parcel
score”
field
was
summed
to
calculate
the
parcel’s
heirs’
property
likelihood
score
(0
–
3).
Parcels
with
a
score
greater
than
or
equal
to
2
were
classified
as
“likely
heirs’
property”
for
further
analysis.

8. Estimating
overlap
between
likely
heirs’
properties
and
prime
farmland
soils
Data
preparation
for
the
analysis
of
overlap
between
likely
heirs’
properties
and
prime
farmland
soils
included
clipping
the
soils
layer
to
the
parcels
layer,
reclassifying
the
soils
layer
based
on
whether
it
contained
prime
farmland
soil,
and
intersecting
this
reclassified
soils
layer
with
the
heirs’
property
likelihood
layer.
Finally,
the
total
acreage
of
prime
farmland
soils
on
likely
heirs’
property
parcels,
the
total
acreage
of
prime
farmland
soils
on
all
non-­‐corporate
residential
and
agricultural
parcels,
and
the
ratio
of
these
two
total
acreages
was
calculated.
Table
2:
Prime
farmland
soils
categories
used
to
reclassify
soils
layer.
Estimating
overlap
between
likely
heirs’
properties
and
undeveloped
landcover
The
methodology
for
the
undeveloped
landcover
overlap
analysis
was
similar
to
the
methodology
for
the
prime
farmland
soils
overlap
analysis.
Data
preparation
for
the
undeveloped
landcover
analysis
included
clipping
the
landcover
layer
to
the
parcels
layer,
reclassifying
the
landcover
layer
into
binary
developed
/
undeveloped
classes,
and
using
zonal
statistics
to
intersect
this
reclassified
landcover
layer
with
the
heirs’
property
likelihood
layer.
Finally,
the
total
area
of
undeveloped
landcover
on
likely
heirs’
property
parcels,
the
total
area
of
undeveloped
landcover
on
all
non-­‐corporate
residential
parcels,
and
the
ratio
of
these
two
totals
was
calculated.
Table
3:
Undeveloped
/
developed
landcover
categories
used
to
reclassify
landcover
layer.

10. Results
This
analysis
found
extensive
overlap
between
likely
heirs’
property
and
high-­‐value
natural
lands
in
the
county:
for
all
non-­‐corporate
residential
and
agricultural
parcels,
31%
of
the
county’s
total
land
acreage,
30%
of
the
county’s
total
prime
farmland
soils,
and
40%
of
the
county’s
undeveloped
landcover
were
found
on
likely
heirs’
properties.
These
results
suggest
that
any
private
land
conservation
efforts
in
communities
likely
affected
by
heirs’
property
-­‐
particularly
rural,
poor,
and
minority
communities
in
the
South
-­‐
may
have
a
vested
interest
in
considering
heirs’
property
landownership
trends
in
their
planning.
Potential
sources
of
error
in
this
analysis
emerge
from
the
heirs’
property
identification
methodology
and
the
soils
and
landcover
data
resolution.
First,
as
described
above,
likely
heirs’
properties
were
identified
using
an
early
version
of
a
methodology
that
is
still
undergoing
development
and
verification;
ideally,
this
analysis
should
be
repeated
and
its
results
updated
to
keep
pace
with
improvements
in
this
methodology.
Second,
the
resolutions
of
the
soils
and
landcover
data
used
are
too
coarse
to
support
definitive
parcel-­‐level
conclusions,
so
the
results
of
this
analysis
must
be
considered
instead
in
terms
of
county-­‐level
trends.

11. Conclusions
This
preliminary
case
study
suggests
that
an
appreciable
portion
of
high-­‐value
natural
lands
may
indeed
be
held
as
heirs’
property
in
the
most
poor,
rural,
and
minority
counties
in
the
South.
This
work
also
makes
a
case
for
further
research
to
expand
this
analysis
to
additional
counties
to
develop
a
more
complete
understanding
of
the
relationship
between
heirs’
property
and
natural
lands
across
the
South.
Finally,
this
work
puts
forward
a
potential
standard
methodology
for
such
research.
Ideally,
such
research
could
build
a
foundation
for
efforts
to
adapt
private
land
conservation
planning,
programming,
and
advocacy
to
better
engage
with
heirs’
property
landowners.
For
example,
land
trusts
might
consider
partnering
with
public
interest
law
centers
to
offer
legal
support
for
land
management
planning,
estate
planning,
quieting
title,
and
-­‐
ultimately
-­‐
conservation
easements
or
family
land
trusts.
Land
trusts
might
also
consider
advocating
measures
to
adapt
conservation
easements
to
lower
wealth
landowners,
such
as
tax
credits
(either
alone
or
in
conjunction
with
existing
tax
deductions,
depending
on
individual
landowners’
tax
situations)
for
conservation
easements
on
land
owned
by
lower
wealth
people
(Mitchell,
personal
communication,
25
April
2016)
or
funding
earmarked
for
conservation
easements
on
recently
cleared
heirs’
property
(StipeMaas,
personal
communication,
19
February
2016).
Such
creative
alliances
between
heirs’
property
landowners
and
the
private
land
conservation
community
promise
to
enrich
rural
landownership
and
land
conservation
in
the
South
and
beyond.

12. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We
thank
Dana
Tomlin
for
his
feedback
on
earlier
drafts,
Cheryl
Danton
for
her
guidance
and
support,
and
Skipper
StipeMaas
and
Thomas
Mitchell
for
their
expertise
on
heirs’
property
landownership.
This
work
was
supported
in
part
by
the
USDA
Forest
Service
Southern
Research
Station.

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