ATLANTA — A new law clinic at Georgia State university launched to help families who pass down property without a formal will or trust.
Sarah Stein is the director of the New Heirs Property Law Clinic, funded by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta.
Channel 2’s Lori Wilson spoke with Stein, an assistant clinical professor at GSU, about how the clinic is helping families build generational wealth.
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“The city of Atlanta is really fast growing and property values have skyrocketed tremendously, in just over the last 10 years,” Stein said.
Stein told Wilson that heirs’ property, or inherited property, is passed down in a family without a formal will or trust.
A recent Harris poll showed that 60% of homeowners that make $50,000 or less per year don’t have a will or trust, leaving them vulnerable.
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“This is the population that we generally serve with our homeownership programs,” Stein said. “So it just made sense that we would go a step further and not only help individuals purchase home, but we wanted to help them secure their properties as well.”
Stein said without a formal will or trust, family members who are given property may not be able to sell it or apply to use equity from the property.
Without the right documentation, those family members may not be eligible for programs that would help them maintain the property.
As home values in Atlanta rise, heirs can lose their property in other ways, as investors look for legal loopholes to take properties they want.
“In that environment where property values are increasing, that creates boiling water, in which displacement can occur,” Stein said. “It just heats up and the pressures are high on folks with any kind of vulnerability as far as their foothold on their own home.”
Right now, eight law students are working with the clinic, learning how to handle heirs property issues.
Stein told Channel 2 Action News that they’ll start taking cases and doing the work for free for qualified owners, starting in January 2027.
“Atlanta is a really important place for us to be doing this work in this context, [and] to be expanding the knowledge and the resources that we have to do the work,” Stein said.
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