Heirs' Property Solar Leases: Why One Heir Can't Sign for the Family

The parcel is 140 acres, flat, a mile from the substation. The county record says "Heirs of Ellis Carter, C/O Robert Carter." Your letter went to Robert. Robert called, and he's interested.

Robert can't sign the lease.

Heirs' property is land that passed down without a will, with the deed never moved into the heirs' names. The children inherit it together, then their children inherit their shares, and each heir ends up owning an undivided fraction of the whole tract. For a solar lease, every one of those co-owners has to sign. One heir can lease only his own share, which doesn't give you the use of the ground a solar farm needs. A North Carolina State farm law guide on solar title goes further: on co-owned land, no single owner can even sign the letter of intent or the option.

So the real question for your team is how many Roberts there are, and whether you can find all of them.

What heirs' property is

USDA describes it as family land owned jointly by the descendants of someone whose estate never cleared probate. The heirs can use the land, but they don't have clear, marketable title, and each generation adds more owners.

That growth is the whole problem. A researchers' brief from the Southern Rural Development Center says the heirs on one property "can number in the hundreds."

This is a different case from an owner who died recently with an estate still open. That one is a probate question, and our post on who signs when the landowner has died walks through it. Heirs' property is what happens when nobody opened the estate at all, sometimes for generations.

How common heirs' property is

More common than most land teams assume, and concentrated in places solar developers work.

Two peer-reviewed studies, summarized in that 2023 brief, estimate 3.3 to 5.3 million acres of heirs' property in eleven Southern and Appalachian states, worth $16 billion to nearly $42 billion. The national study counts over 444,000 parcels and 9.2 million acres across the US.

State by state, the two studies put Georgia at between 22,779 and 39,430 heirs' parcels, and North Carolina at between 39,162 and 88,339. The heaviest concentrations are in the South and Central Appalachia, with more in Hispanic communities in Texas and on land once allotted to individual tribal members.

Both studies built their numbers from county tax records, and the brief notes there's no standard way counties record heirs' property. The same records are on your parcel list.

Why one heir can't sign for everyone

When land is inherited this way, the heirs hold it as tenants in common. The NC State guide puts the rule plainly: each co-owner "can only dispose of that fractional interest," and any proposal about how the land is used "must be agreed by all co-tenants."

A North Carolina firm that handles these cases explains what that means for a lease signed by one heir. It doesn't bind the other owners' shares. It doesn't give the tenant exclusive control of the property. And the heirs who didn't sign keep their right to be on the land.

Picture that on a solar site. You hold a lease from Robert, while his sister, three cousins and an uncle's estate own the rest and signed nothing. Each of them still has a right to use the whole tract.

That's why one law firm's guide to solar lease due diligence says heirs' property "may eliminate a project from consideration." You have to find every heir, and then every heir has to agree in writing. One who won't answer, or can't be found, holds up the parcel.

What developers do with an heirs' parcel

Get every co-owner to sign

The direct route. Build the family tree, find each living heir, and get each one's signature on the option and the lease. The Center for Heirs' Property, a nonprofit that clears titles for families, puts the standard simply: "Everyone with a legal interest must be identified and notified." In North Carolina, the NC State guide adds, a developer will also want the signature of an heir's spouse.

Clear the title, then lease

The other route is to get the title fixed first, so fewer people have to sign. Depending on the state and the family, that can mean:

• Opening and settling the original owner's estate, decades late
• A recorded heirship affidavit, where the state and the title company accept one
• Family members deeding their shares to one or two relatives

Texas shows how an heirship affidavit works. A family member swears to the family history and lists every heir. Title companies typically want two disinterested witnesses to back it up, plus a death certificate. Once it has been on record for five years, Texas law treats it as prima facie evidence of the facts in it.

Your title company decides what is good enough, and it won't be fast. The Center says resolving a title can take six months for some families and several years for others. If you sign an option while that happens, make sure the option period is long enough for it.

Don't buy one share and force a sale

On heirs' property, any co-owner can ask a court to divide the land or sell it. A developer could in theory buy one heir's share and ask for a sale.

More than twenty states and territories had adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act as of 2024, including Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Virginia. Under the Texas version, the court orders an appraisal. The other heirs get 45 days to buy out the co-owner who asked for the sale. The court leans toward splitting the land into separate parcels over selling it, and a sale has to be on the open market unless the court finds sealed bids or an auction would get the family more.

So the shortcut is slow and public, and it puts the family on the other side of the table in the county where you need a permit.

How to spot heirs' property on your list before you mail

The two studies used the owner name field to find heirs' parcels. Your parcel data has the same field. Look for these words in it:

• Heirs, or Heirs of
• Estate, or Est
• Et al
• Deceased
• C/O (care of)
• Family of
• Undivided or fractional interest

One study added two more signs: no recorded sale since 1980, and no improvements on record since 1980. The brief notes that some parcels with no sale and no permits aren't heirs' property, so treat these as a flag, not a verdict.

Expect them among the smaller tracts. One study left out parcels over 500 acres, on the view that tracts that big are rarely heirs' property. So look hardest at the smaller tracts in the middle of a block you're trying to put together.

Why your mail reaches one heir

The county has one mailing address for that parcel. On an heirs' parcel it's usually the "C/O" name, the relative the tax bill goes to. Your letter goes to the same place.

Robert may read it. His sister in Atlanta and the cousins in Houston and Detroit never see it. Robert may not even know who all the heirs are. The Center calls the family tree "very important" for exactly that reason.

So on a parcel that needs every signature, mail puts your offer in front of one owner, maybe the one most tired of dealing with the land. Every other heir has to be found, and has to hear the same offer, before your team has anything to sign. That's usually where these parcels stall, and they end up marked as no response on a list you've already mailed.

The heirs your mail never reached

On an heirs' parcel, the owners holding you up are the ones your letter never reached.

That's the work we do on a developer's parcel list. We find who can actually sign, the heirs behind a dead deed included, email each of them, follow up with the ones who stay quiet, and pass the owner who wants to talk to your team in seconds. Your team takes the call, handles the title and signs the lease.

On one campaign for a developer in Georgia, 1 in 9 parcels wanted to talk about a lease once their owners were reached that way.

If your list has rows that start with "Heirs of," send it to us and we'll walk you through who on those parcels still hasn't heard from you.

This isn't legal advice. Co-ownership, partition and heirship rules vary by state. Confirm signing authority with counsel and your title company before executing any agreement.