Partition actions on forestland owned as heir property and the determinants of court decisions

Abstract

In the United States, family forest landowners own a substantial portion of the forestland. Some of the forestland is heir property, which is created when an owner dies without a will or with a defective will. Each co-owner of heir property has an undivided fractional interest in the entire land, and any co-owners can file a partition action to isolate their interest from the land. While a physical division of the land is possible, a partition action often results in a forced sale of the entire land and unwilling loss of land for some co-owners. In this study, published legal cases were utilized to collect empirical evidence of heir property partition on forestland, and furthermore, logit models were employed to examine the determinants of court decisions. The analyses identified several influential factors behind judges' decisions. These included whether incomes from forestland were shared among co-owners, the magnitude of fractional interest of a partition claimant, the presence of absentee co-owners, the physical and financial work related to the land, and the availability of detailed facts about heirs and land. The empirical findings have implications for heir property owners to administer their properties, institutions to design legal strategies for partition disputes, and policymakers to address and improve the legal framework encompassing heir property and its partition.