Preventing and Addressing Heirs' Properties: A Toolkit for Launching, Operating, and Managing an Evidence-Based Program
- Issue Areas
- Housing and community development Financial security
- Outcomes
- Supportive neighborhoods
About this Toolkit
Homeownership is central to the “American Dream.” Owning a home can be a vehicle for building family wealth, a foundation of family stability, and a physical anchor for family togetherness.
Yet too often, families see the benefits of home ownership slip away due to a lack of estate planning. When homes pass from one generation to the next without a clear title, it creates a fractured ownership situation called “heirs’ property.” Also referred to as “tangled title,” this is a fragile legal circumstance that can easily trigger a cascade of hardships. And it disproportionately impacts low-income communities of color.
Unable to prove ownership, it becomes difficult for those living in heirs’ properties to buy insurance, get a loan, or get a permit to make home improvements. Unless they have access to cash, it becomes difficult to maintain the home — and they can’t access government-sponsored home-repair or disaster-recovery programs, either. Fractured ownership can also lead to forced sales, which undervalue properties and reduce the inheritance that heirs receive. Forced sales can also result in evictions with little notice.
In this way, heirs’ property is both a symptom and cause of housing instability in America, and deeply intertwined with other pressing concerns like displacement, homelessness, and safe housing. The problem is a continuing legacy of discrimination and predatory behavior in the property industry, exacerbated by unequal access to legal services, and worsened by widespread misinformation about estate planning.
Above all, heirs’ property drains the value of a family’s assets and limits opportunities to build intergenerational wealth. It’s an underlying factor in the nation’s persistent racial wealth gap, and a major reason that gap may grow wider. Some $84 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfers are expected to occur by 2045. Without growth in proper estate planning for families with low and moderate incomes, that wealth transfer will pass many of them by.
While heirs’ property is emerging as a national issue, it’s at the local level where the most promising solutions are found. A successful program in Jacksonville, Florida, stands out as a national model.
LISC Jacksonville began developing its effort to confront heirs’ properties in 2020. At the time, a study from the Brookings Institution and Gallup had found that homes in majority-Black neighborhoods are significantly undervalued, and flagged Jacksonville as one of the most deeply challenged cities in this regard. When advocates at LISC Jacksonville looked into the reasons for this, a high prevalence of heirs’ property emerged as part of the explanation.
As of December 2025, the Jacksonville effort has helped residents clear up clouded titles on more than 180 properties and create 2,200 estate plans, stabilizing $53.8 million worth of home value.
The Jacksonville program has three key components:
Free legal services, delivered by a legal aid firm whose attorneys work with residents to resolve heirs’ property situations in court and prevent the creation of new heirs’ property through estate planning.
Robust education and outreach that relies on trusted messengers to saturate entire neighborhoods with awareness of problems related to heirs’ property and how to access free legal services.
Sophisticated data analytics capable of identifying heirs’ properties by parcel, enabling advocates to target these services to neighborhoods where they’re needed most.
This toolkit aims to help local advocates and leaders across the United States replicate Jacksonville’s successful approach to heirs’ property. You will find step-by-step guidance on key actions required to build targeted interventions, along with detailed descriptions of how LISC Jacksonville handled each one. You will also find checklists of activities necessary at each stage, messaging tips for communicating with residents and stakeholders, and links to original documents and materials that other communities are free to use.
There is no way to copy-and-paste solutions to complex problems like heirs’ property. State laws around inheritance and land transfer can vary significantly from state to state; it’s critical to learn about the legal landscape in your state before confronting this problem locally. It is also important to note that while heirs’ property is a major problem in rural areas, this toolkit is best suited for interventions in more urban or suburban contexts. While heirs’ property issues are similar in rural contexts, rural advocates may find differences in the kinds of community partners they would work with, funding streams available, or underlying economic dynamics.