Thomas Wilson Mitchell is a property law scholar reforming longstanding legal doctrines that deprive Black and other disadvantaged American families of their property and real estate wealth. Heirs’ property, a subset of tenancy-in-common property, tends to be created in the absence of a will or estate plan and results in “undivided ownership,” which means each of the legally defined heirs own a fractional interest in the property (rather than a specific piece or portion of the property)....
"Individuals with stable property rights are better able to participate in meaningful ways in our society. Growing up in San Francisco, I witnessed with much sadness the dramatic displacement of African American residents and businesses that occurred in part because the people affected lacked secure property rights. As a lawyer, I realized that certain property laws needed to be changed and better policies needed to be developed to give urban and rural African Americans, and other vulnerable people, stronger property rights that could enable them to build wealth and preserve important aspects of their history and culture...."
October 6, 2020
I'm so pleased to see that my old colleague Thomas Mitchell has won a MacArthur "genius" grant.
From the MacArthur Foundation website:
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So estate law that works for everyone else needs changed because it doesn't work for blacks? Got it.
Hey, I write wills and revocable living trusts.
Do I get a MacArthur genius grant?
So long as the law changes through normal political channels, fine.
So, the issue was not diversity classes (e.g. "race"), bur rather economic and social classes.
"urban and rural African Americans, and other vulnerable people ..."
So they're the most vulnerable because? His cancellation notice is in the mail.
I read the blurb on the website. He drafted a new Uniform law. I agree with it.
Apparently in the South, someone would buy an heir's tenant in common interest in real estate and then force a partition sale. Clever way to get a cheap price for land.
Memo to the Althouse community. You can avoid the tenants in common problem with a will or revocable living trust. Don't rely on the laws of intestacy of your state; especially if you own real estate.
Thomas Wilson Mitchell ...that deprive Black and other disadvantaged American families of their property and real estate wealth.
So he's a racist. Nowadays that's a pretty good reason to get the "genius" grant, which was diluted by fellow racist Ta-Nehisi Coates who was anything but than a genius. Maybe the grant should have a different name...
Race-based property law. Sounds like he's a genius racist.
Lots of ink spilled about poor uneducated people who unwittingly sign away their property. Or wittingly.
But if they can't alienate their property, what do they own?
Years ago in a condemnation case we needed to determine the owners of a small parcel of rural land in Virginia that had been used as a family cemetary. We ended up hiring a professional genealogist who came up with scores of names, many of whom could no longer be found. The cost of the search was far in excess of the value of the property. So far as I know, all the owners were white (or, if you prefer, White).
Hmm, he doesn't look that old.
Now do property rights on Native American reservations.
And show that the forced communism of the US Constitution is one of the main reasons Natives have been traditionally poor.
It is an uncorrected flaw in a tremendous document.
Ownership of real property by Natives on their reservations should be allowed.
Right now the tribes control the real property and the individuals have no incentive to improve the land they occupy.
Communism foes not work.
Kudos to your former colleague. I think that is a wonderful and worthy pursuit, assisting others through such reforms so they can keep what should be theirs. I wish him much success in his endeavors.
Too bad, though, that he may be fighting a losing battle. When our very own Pope Francis has concluded that “the right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods.” then those "...Black and other disadvantaged American families..." have no rights to that property. It belongs to the collective.
"... because the people affected lacked secure property rights."
It might be more accurate to say "lacked knowledge of their property rights." But helping people to be aware of those rights, and helping families to benefit from property rights, is definitely to be encouraged.
Congratulations to him!
Property laws and rights upon the death of a person can be unbearably complicated, and I applaud him working to solve that for vulnerable people.
My sister died with a will, and it took six months for probate to clear her property for sale. It's ridiculous. Luckily she left her daughter money to pay for the expenses of maintaining the property that long, but not everybody has that kind of money. It almost makes you suspect they *want* investors to be able to snatch up property at reduced prices rather than let property and property rights pass on.
I think the tenants-in-common, joint tenancy situation is similiar to problems on some Indian reservation lands. Thinking Piaute-Shoshone Rez in Fallon, Nevada. Good land sits idle because too many generations have a say and a claim.
Translated into honest, I think what he said was: Black people are too stupid to make wills, so we need to change the laws to compensate for their inherent inability to cope with modern society.
That may be an insight of genius, but it is also rather concerning in several different ways.
So the genius idea was to change intestacy laws? To make it harder to split one piece of property into smaller ones, or easier?
♫...and when he died, all he left us was a loan ♫
Individuals with stable property rights are better able to participate in meaningful ways in our society.
Overall, probably one of the better arguments against "it takes a village" socialism since the first two winters at Plymouth Plantation.
[Bradford] noted that the seven-year contract signed July 1, 1620, before leaving Plymouth England, stipulated that the Pilgrims were to pool, for common benefit, "all profits and benefits that are got by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means of any person or persons...." It further noted "that at the end of the seven years, the capital and profits, viz. the houses, lands, goods and chattels, be equally divided betwixt the Adventurers and Planters...."
Has he produced anything of value or is he being recognized for clearly asserting his support for race based political and social policy?
Nothing to say about this. It sounds like he thought through a historical problem that caused real misallocations of resources and came up with an efficient solution.
Good job.
Shorter, you purchased it, you pay taxes on it but, it's mine!
As long as he’s serious about the “and other disadvantaged,” fine. But pardon me if I think he really doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about poor Hispanics, Koreans, Vietnamese, and especially not poor white people.
I know several middle class people that died with out a will, with property and multiple heirs.
In one case an heir has fallen on hard times, but the other two heirs refuse to sell.
In other cases the lawyers ate up most of the value.
I have beaten my own kids over the head until they wrote wills, especially the ones with children.
Someone (hopefully not the hundreds of scam artists) should educate people that you don't need to pay a lawyer for a legitimate will. (Yes, I did, but I'm not - hopefully - passing along a single asset.
FWIW, if you want to help with generational wealth do Social Security reform. Allow at least PART of the taxes you pay to go into an IRA type fund OWNED by the tax payer.
Worried about market fluctuations? Mandate it go into the safest vehicles out there. (I would prefer the poor get to take advantage of faster growth, but I also know how the left will frame this "risky" scheme.)
Right now the poor are using social security payments as their major source of retirement income. When you and your spouse die, SS security dies with you. Even a secure investment would grow over a worker's life time to a much better return than SS provides.
Plus it would be YOURS. Now there is something that could be divided and passed to your heirs.
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