The Reels brothers were held in contempt of court for nearly eight years.
In America, land is a valuable resource providing economic stability and growth for many people, and is often passed down from generation to generation. But for some low-income and minority Americans, property acreage passed on as a family heirloom can turn into a nightmare.
In North Carolina, if a person dies without a legal will, without formally passing land on to their chosen heirs, and owned property as a tenancy in common, a partition will be triggered if someone owning an interest in the property -- one of the tenants in common or a third party who has bought out an interest -- files a partition action in court, Jane Sternecky, the Uniform Law Commission legislative counsel responsible for enactment of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, told ABC...
"Oftentimes, a developer will sort of work to get inside the family and use a court to force the sale of the land. The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act does a lot to curtail that. It would really change the game in terms of protecting people's land in the state," Jesse Williams, law fellow at the Wake Forest Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, told ABC News.published in 2022, there was a nearly 90% decline in Black agricultural land ownership from 1910 to 1997.
After several attempted appeals, the brothers were released in 2019 with the help of a local attorney. "One of the biggest things is that unlike virtually every state in the Southeast, including all of its neighboring states, North Carolina has yet to pass the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act ," Williams told ABC News. "It's passed bipartisanly all over the country, and it does a lot to protect heirs property owners, to protect Black family land, to protect land owned by low-income folks across North Carolina.
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