Could My Family Still Have A Claim To Land Lost Through Possible Fraud 70+ Years Ago?

Location: Tennessee In 1903, my great-grandfather was given property via a fee simple absolute deed. He had two kids — a daughter (my great-aunt) and a son (my grandfather). The son passed away in another state before his father but had children, including my parent who was only 7 at the time and disconnected from the rest of the family.

After my great-grandfather died, the daughter was the only one living at the house. By the 1950s, she was elderly and likely fell victim to title fraud. She signed the deed over to a man who was later exposed in a local newspaper for defrauding another family. Turns out, the company he worked for was involved in at least 5 similar cases — targeting elderly people and getting them to unknowingly sign into payment schemes. In those cases, judges sided with the families and reversed the transfers.

In our case, when her payments defaulted, the land went into foreclosure. The man she signed it to disappeared. A substitute trustee (a lawyer) transferred the deed to his sister-in-law, who then gave it back to him via a warranty deed. The house was demolished in the ’60s. In the ’70s, that same lawyer attempted shady quitclaim transfers with other lawyers — bouncing the deed between himself and colleagues. Eventually, the land was put on an installment plan, then lost to a delinquent tax sale. Someone bought it in the ’80s, and it’s been passed again via quitclaim to a new owner in the 2020s.

The land has sat vacant and unimproved since demolition. The current owner pays taxes, but there’s no clear sign of actual use or possession.

Here’s my question: If the daughter signed away the land without including her brother’s heirs (like my family), and the original transfer was part of a larger fraud scheme — do the disconnected, now-discovered heirs have a claim?