Page 22 - Georgia Forestry - Summer 2019

“There’s a recognition that things could
be done in a concrete way to help stem some of the forces that were leading to involuntary land loss — policy interventions to stabilize their ownership or enable
them to move from clinging on with their fingernails to actually thriving.” — Thomas Mitchell
however, as well as Hurricane Katrina evacuees interviewed by Georgia Apple- seed, many of whom were ineligible for federal “Road Home” rebuilding funds. More recently, legal scholars and policy makers have noted a surge in interest in uniform partition reform, which would make heirs-property disputes easier to resolve, without breaking things up.
“In the last couple of decades, the narrative that black landowners were on the verge of extinction has begun to dissipate,” said Thomas Mitchell, a law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law. “There’s a recognition that things could be done in a concrete way to help stem some of the forces that were leading to involuntary land loss — policy inter- ventions to stabilize their ownership or enable them to move from clinging on with their fingernails to actually thriving.”
Mitchell served as the principal drafter of a model statute for new property parti- tion laws, which have since been adopted by 11 states. In Georgia, the state legis- lature passed the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA) in 2012, allowing for more legal alternatives to forced auctions. In the past, many heirs-property owners only learned that their land had been sold when they received an eviction notice in the mail, and so the new law also calls for better notification practices. Judges are now required to exercise greater consider- ation for families at risk of homelessness, and there is a mandate for the hiring of a
20 | GEORGIA FORESTRY
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