If I were prepared to die, I'd have a will. And my family members would know where to find it.

But I don't have one. And if I don't take care of this soon, it could quickly pose an inheritance problem because all my land interests are held in trust by the U.S. Interior Department.

All trust land holders need to begin estate planning, considering new regulations unfolding from the American Indian Probate and Reform Act.

AIPRA, which went into effect on June 20, 2006, includes new rules on how the Interior Department can diminish the number of people who inherit land. The final AIPRA regulations are set to be approved, likely by the end of July, said Michelle Singer, an Interior Department regulatory management director.

A will can help Native families preserve their land for future generations. It will also prevent an estate from becoming part of the Interior Department's 53,000-plus probate, or property list, backlog.

Before I came to work on Thursday, I opened a letter from the Interior Department's Office of Special Trustee. The letter provided a list of my inherited property assets, including nearly a dozen fractionated tracts of land.

In 1887, Congress passed a law to break up large, land-based reservations by dividing, or allotting, sections to individuals. For more than 120 years, tens of thousands of people have inherited undivided interests in land. It's not unusual for hundreds of people to all have a stake in a small and single tract of land.

The Interior Department was assigned to manage all these trust lands. It was sued in 1996 for its historical mismanagement, a problem largely blamed on fractionated land, or the ever-increasing number of landowners on single parcels. The class-action suit, Cobell vs. Kempthorne, pits a half-million landowners against the department.

U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson is expected to announce a monetary cash settlement in August, effectively ending the 12-year-long case.

The American Indian Probate and Reform Act promises to reduce the fractionated land base, meaning it will effectively limit the number of people who inherit land. This is why it's important for trust land owners to become familiar with the new AIPRA regulations.

For example, if a person owns a 20 percent interest in land and has five children, the children should inherit a 4 percent undivided interest. But the new AIPRA regulations allow for undivided interests of less than 5 percent to be sold before probate without consent of the legal heir. The heirs are entitled to profit sales.

Sally Willett, an administrative law judge in Phoenix, said the provision will likely lead to a lawsuit. Similar land consolidation efforts have been twice declared unconstitutional.

An individual can take control of inheritance concerns by writing a will. He or she can begin by requesting an Individual Trust Inventory report from the local or regional BIA land titles and records office.

The next step is to find a legal expert who understands the new AIPRA regulations. This might prove difficult. As of April 2005, the Bureau of Indian Affairs stopped drafting and storing wills for landowners.

Doug Nash, director of the Institute for Indian Estate Planning and Probate at Seattle University, testified before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in May. He said the BIA needs to pay for estate planning services and to resume its former duties.

"Unless these services are provided, the benefits that are contained within AIPRA will not be realized and backlogs will continue to increase," he told the Senate committee. He also said an estate plan "is worthless if the family cannot find the will after death and the bureau has no record of its existence."

While few resources exist to help landowners, a few organizations are doing what they can to assist. The Indian Land Working Group in Albuquerque, N.M., and the estate planning institute, a project of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation in Little Canada, Minn., both strive to preserve and restore the individual and tribal land base.

Unfortunately, each organization is short of money.

The institute received Interior Department money in 2005 for a nine-month-long pilot project. It has since established privately funded and limited estate-planning services on 20 reservations in six states. The organization has scheduled a July 22-23 symposium in Seattle to provide training on the new AIPRA regulations and tribal probate codes.

Additional details about can be found at www.indianwills.org.

The Indian Land Working Group has the most experience in educating Native landowners about land consolidation and preservation. Its organizers will host an 18th annual land conference this fall in Tucson, Ariz. Topics on the November agenda include discussions on probates and allottee associations. For more information, go to http://www.ilwg.org.

Tribes and landowners can find other useful information on AIPRA on the Montana State University Web site at http://www.montana.edu/indianland/.

The Web sites provide a solid background for anyone who wants to learn about land inheritance and preservation. I even found some standard forms to begin estate planning.

It's time to get started.

Reporter Jodi Rave:1-800-366-7186 or at jodi.rave@lee.net.