The upcoming NeighborWorks® Training Institute in Chicago promises to be an incubator for ideas, innovations and energy when it opens on Feb. 23. One of the courses that has people talking is Building Legacies: Property Inheritance and Estate Planning Strategies for Housing Professionals (HO233). The course continues the conversation on how to increase generational wealth and make sure that when families or individuals do buy a home, they are able to pass that wealth on. It should be of particular interest to housing counselors.

As homeowners surveyed what remained and assessed how to rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some of those homeowners became mired in even more challenges: They learned that title to their home wasn’t officially theirs.

In Florida, where the community development nonprofit Wealth Watchers is based, a Lady Bird Deed – a deed that says who will inherit the property if the owner dies but where the owner retains full rights (including sales rights) while living – is a legal way to transfer wealth. One state over in Georgia, which Wealth Watchers also serves, this type of deed is not legal.

Nobody wins when the family feuds.

Let me tell you a story about a house. 

Not just any house — but the big house. The house where my cousins spent summers running barefoot through the yard, where Sunday dinners stretched late into the evening, filled with laughter and the smell of southern cooking and my great-aunt’s White Diamonds perfume. A house full of memories, history and love. 

And then, it became a legal battlefield.