In 2020, Mississippi enacted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA), a piece of legislation that helps families preserve their wealth for generations to come and prevents unfair partition sales.
The UPHPA provides protection to owners of heirs’ property, land that is informally passed down from generation to generation when a landowner dies without making a will and multiple individuals inherit the land. If the property passes through several generations in this manner, it can be owned by dozens of heirs, with each entitled to only a very small, undivided percentage of the land.
This can create financial and legal issues for families with heirs’ property. If a real estate speculator purchases just one relative’s share, that speculator is legally entitled to file a partition action in court, which often results in a court-ordered sale of the land for pennies on the dollar. This process involuntarily strips families of their land and any economic benefits from farming or land ownership, depriving them from receiving the fair market value of their ancestral home.
To prevent the harm posed by predatory partition actions, the UPHPA creates a series of due process protections designed to allow owners of heirs’ property to stay on their family’s land whenever possible, and which ensure the family receives fair market value for their asset when keeping the land is not an option.