FROM RUTH GAO, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL, IMPACT INVESTMENTS, ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION
MARCH 2026

AFN Short Take is a blog series highlighting insights and perspectives from recent AFN programming events.

Heirs’ property sits at the intersection of housing stability, wealth preservation, and intergenerational transfer yet it is often addressed in technical or fragmented ways that obscure its broader economic and equity implications. On January 12, AFN New Jersey convened funders, legal advocates, researchers, and practitioners for Heirs’ Property: Investing to Preserve Wealth in New Jersey, a discussion centered on newly developed New Jersey–specific social return on investment (SROI) analysis.

Grounded in New Jersey–specific research and informed by AFN’s growing body of heirs’ property work, the convening surfaced a shared conclusion: preserving wealth families already hold is as essential to economic mobility as creating new assets. And heirs’ property is one of the most tangible places where that principle is tested.

Heirs’ Property as a Structural Housing and Wealth Issue

Throughout the convening, speakers emphasized that heirs’ property is not a narrow legal anomaly, but a structural feature of how property is passed down, especially in communities with limited access to estate planning and legal resources. When ownership becomes fractionated across generations without clear title, families can lose access to credit, insurance, disaster recovery funds, and even the ability to make necessary repairs. Because tangled titles make it nearly impossible to resolve competing claims, even a modest tax lien can sever a family from their property entirely.

In a high-cost housing market like New Jersey, those constraints can quickly transform inherited homes from stabilizing assets into sources of vulnerability.

The implications extend beyond individual households. But as practitioners in the room made clear, the consequences are often more immediate and personal. “When someone loses a property, through foreclosure or otherwise, only because they don’t know their legal rights and options,,” said Maryann Flanigan Sutherland of Legal Services of New Jersey, “they are often literally losing their inheritance and generational wealth.” That loss can represent the erosion of a family’s primary asset—and with it, the stability that asset was meant to provide.

Participants also pushed back on the notion that heirs’ property reflects family mismanagement. With only 31% of Americans having a will, heirs’ property is often a predictable outcome of systemic gaps in access to legal and financial tools. Rather than focusing solely on preventing formation, speakers encouraged funders to recognize what is already present: “Heirs’ property is fundamentally an asset,” said AFN’s Karama Neal. “It’s an asset for the person living in the home, for other heirs who may not live there, and for the community.”

New Jersey’s housing landscape makes this issue especially urgent. The state’s homeownership rate trails the national average, while housing affordability relative to income ranks among the most challenging in the country. Nearly three-quarters of households earning under $75,000 are cost-burdened, underscoring how precarious housing stability can be for moderate-income families. In this context, preserving existing affordable homeownership is not optional—it is critical.

A recent AFN policy scan, New Jersey: State-Level Policy Scan of Laws Impacting Heirs’ Property, finds that the state has historically had relatively few of the legal protections considered most important for preventing and resolving heirs’ property. At the same time, momentum is building. In 2025, New Jersey became the 26th jurisdiction to adopt the Uniform Partition of Heirs’ Property Act (UPHPA), and lawmakers have introduced additional measures to strengthen protections for vulnerable homeowners.

What the New Jersey Analysis Revealed

Building on AFN’s 2025 national brief, Heirs’ Property: Investing to Preserve Wealth, the localized research applies the SROI framework to New Jersey’s context and market conditions. The analysis assessed property values, legal intervention costs, foreclosure risk, and local market dynamics to estimate how targeted investments in heirs’ property resolution translate into retained wealth and avoided loss.

Key insights shared during the convening included:

  • Resolution generates significant economic return. In cases where foreclosure is prevented and families retain ownership, the projected return on investment can reach as high as $40 for every dollar invested. These returns reflect not only preserved household equity, but avoided distressed sales, stabilized property tax bases, and retained neighborhood value.
  • Even under conservative assumptions, the case remains strong. When the modeled outcome reflects prevention of a distressed or below-market sale — rather than foreclosure — the investment still produces positive returns. In other words, heirs’ property interventions do not depend on worst-case scenarios to demonstrate value; they produce measurable gains across a range of likely outcomes.
  • Higher-value markets raise both risk and reward. In many New Jersey communities, home values are substantial. That means unresolved heirs’ property can result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in accumulated equity. As economist José Díaz noted during the convening, “Once that wealth is lost, it’s gone.” In stronger housing markets, the opportunity cost of inaction increases dramatically.
  • Timing shapes outcomes. The analysis underscored that early connection to specialized legal expertise — before tax foreclosure advances or intra-family disputes escalate — reduces costs and improves resolution rates. Heirs’ property work functions not only as asset preservation, but as risk mitigation, lowering the likelihood of cascading financial loss.
Building on Policy Momentum in New Jersey

Recent legislative developments signal meaningful progress. But statutory reform alone does not automatically preserve wealth.

Heirs’ property often surfaces in moments of crisis: during tax foreclosure, after a death without a will, or in the wake of a disaster. Even relatively small debts can threaten homes carrying significant equity. As practitioners noted, families frequently seek help only after foreclosure processes advance, when options are more limited and costs higher. Legal protections may exist, but without timely access to expertise and coordinated systems, their impact is constrained. For funders, the opportunity lies in building on policy momentum with targeted investments that strengthen implementation and expand access.

Participants highlighted several strategic entry points:

  • Prevention and early intervention. Expanding access to estate planning education, wills clinics, and transfer-on-death tools can reduce the formation of heirs’ property while honoring family intent.
  • Legal capacity and title resolution. Investing in specialized legal services ensures families can navigate partition protections, tax foreclosure defense, and title clarification before equity is lost.
  • Systems coordination. Supporting collaboration across courts, municipal tax authorities, housing agencies, and legal providers can prevent families from falling through administrative gaps.
  • Data and financial innovation. Improving data visibility and piloting responsible financing tools can help families not only retain property, but stabilize and responsibly leverage it.

As the convening made clear, heirs’ property resolution is not simply a legal service—it is a wealth preservation strategy. In higher-value housing markets like many parts of New Jersey, even a single prevented foreclosure can represent the preservation of generational equity. The infrastructure for progress is emerging. The question now is whether it will be resourced at the scale required to translate legal reform into durable economic stability.

AFN is developing a growing body of research to help funders, practitioners, and policymakers understand the scope of heirs’ property, identify levers for change, and align capital with effective solutions. Explore our broader heirs’ property toolkit for a sequenced roadmap for action.