Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Louisiana

undivided real estate

My great grandparents property is still not divide. All the children have died and now its is grand and great grand children, my family had been given written documentation from other family members their share of the undivided property. How do we need to make this legal. One of the documents have been notarized but the other two have not. My sisters, brother and I are inheirting this on my fathers side. When we have contacted other members to have a session. No one wants to do one or give names of all of the great grand children to have everything divided fairly. What do we need to do with the documents to assure if someone does the session that we do get our shares of the property? My father was given 3 shares. IT was a total of 31 acres and there were 7 children. We are suppose to own the 3 shares. The other 4 only own 1 share each. It was told at one time we would get a little over 13 acres. The lawyer my dad was using died and we were contacted to pick up everything and we took the letters to the courthouse to have them put on file and the lady there told us we had to have them written up ''legally'' somebody please help!


Asked on 1/03/08, 3:24 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

Nick Pizzolatto, Jr. Pizzolatto Law Office

Re: undivided real estate

Unfortunately, notarized statements are not "wills" dispositive of property. Someone will have to open the successions of the grand(great-grand)parents, and then the parents. This will get the property to you and any of your cousins whose parent died will have to open those successions to get their property. Expenses of the successions are paid out of the property. Remember, you only own a share of the whole 31 acres, not a certain amount of acreage. This will be time consuming but it has to be done to get the rightful ownership determined.

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Answered on 1/03/08, 7:48 am


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