Georgia State University's College of Law has a new way to help families hold on to the homes they inherit. The FHLBank Atlanta Heirs' Property Law Clinic, which held its ribbon-cutting at the downtown law school on Aug. 27, will train law students to provide free legacy planning to low- and moderate-income property owners and to work with families already caught in heirs' property disputes. Georgia State says it is the first clinic of its kind in the state.
What heirs' property is and why it matters
When someone dies without a clear will, trust or estate plan, the home they owned doesn't pass cleanly to the next generation. Ownership splits among heirs who may never be named in the public record, and the property becomes what lawyers call heirs' property. Georgia has nearly 40,000 properties like that, and legal experts say the status is one of the most common reasons families lose homes they never meant to give up. Fulton and DeKalb counties carry the highest total value of heirs' property in the state.
Clinic director Sarah Stein described the risk at the ceremony: the law sees fractional owners and unknown parties rather than a family living in a house, and in a fast-growing city that uncertainty invites tax sales, code enforcement calls and unsolicited cash offers.
Unlike criminal defendants, people facing civil matters such as wills and inheritance have no right to a lawyer. Every year hundreds of thousands of Georgians handle those cases on their own.
Who's paying for it
The Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, which puts at least 10 percent of its net income into affordable housing programs each year, is giving the clinic $500,000 a year for three years. President and CEO Reggie O'Shields said the bank sees estate planning as part of homeownership and building generational wealth. According to the bank's research, 60 percent of U.S. homeowners earning less than $50,000 have no will, trust or estate plan.
O'Shields has been through it himself. Even with a will in hand, he and his brother inherited their parents' home in equal shares and had to work out taxes, insurance and who would live there while they were still grieving.
Dean Courtney Anderson said people across metro Atlanta have regularly asked the law school for help with affordable housing, heirs' property and tangled titles, and until now it had no way to take those cases. Students get transactional and education work and can see cases through from start to finish.
Students started clinic coursework this semester. Stein expects the clinic to begin taking clients from the community in early 2027.
Protecting a home now
FHLBank Atlanta suggests a few steps homeowners can take today: write or update a will that names the home, make sure the deed is recorded with the county, plan how the property will be managed if several heirs share it, consider a trust or LLC to hold it, and tell your heirs what you intend.
The clinic adds to Georgia State's growing footprint downtown, which we covered in our look at the university's $107 million campus remake.
Original reporting by Mirtha Donastorg for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.