Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
‘Because of a technicality you done uprooted a family’. The Lewis family is a Black, low-income family who owned 480 acres of land and a homestead in northern Louisiana. Throughout the years, the Lewis family lived on the land and consistently paid their property taxes. However, this land was heirs property, a relatively new term in property law that is often used to describe property inherited from a landowner who dies intestate. When a landowner dies intestate, all of his or her heirs inherit a fractional share of the property and equal rights to possess and use the property. If these heirs subsequently die intestate, their own heirs will inherit their share of the property, and the shares of co-owners will divide further with each generation. After several generations, hundreds of co-owners may own the same property. Many of these heirs do not live on the land, and some are apathetic toward their co-ownership share. These apathetic co-owners may then sell their small fractional interests to unrelated third parties …

Ashton Austin, From Property Rights to Human Rights: Combating Forced Partition in Louisiana with the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, 85 Louisiana Law Review (2025).