Jones Walker associate Shelby C. Stone will be working with the Louisiana Appleseed organization on a pro bono project team, whose objective is to study Louisiana heirship property law. The Louisiana Legislature has requested the Senate Committee on Judiciary A and the House Committee on Civil Law and Procedure meet and function as a joint committee with a four-fold purpose: to study heirship property law, to develop new legislation that will facilitate the ability of co-owners of heirship property to make their titles merchantable, to review the rights and obligations of co-owners of heirship property in order to prevent undue hardship resulting from partition sales, and to review the costs of probate and of intrafamily transfers of real estate to determine whether such costs might be reduced for co-owners and heirs of property with small value.

The Appleseed project team will produce a brief to be presented as a tool to the joint committee to enable its members to better understand the Orleans Documentary Transfer Tax and its adverse impact on lower income families. The team will research and compile a summary of New Orleans ordinances on the documentary transfer tax and draft solutions to achieve the stated goals of the Concurrent Resolution regarding the documentary transfer tax.

For more information on Louisiana Appleseed, please visit their website. For more information on this project, please contact Shelby Stone or Louisiana Appleseed Advisory Council Chair Harry Hardin.