SL ignores natural evolution of group land

Group land is formed by people who already own land wanting to combine forces and create group land. Unfortunately, SL doesn't take too kindly to this natural progression of things, instead,THEY THINK THAT GROUP LAND COMES FROM PEOPLE WHO HAVE LOTS OF MONEY, AND YET, ODDLY, ARE LANDLESS UNTIL THEY BUY GROUP LAND, AND THEN START THEIR BUILDING, so once personal land is contributed to a group, all objects on that land are returned to the owner as lost objects and the whole thing has to be recreated. I can't tell you how much this sucks. WE NEED A BUTTON THAT SAYS TRANSFER OBJECTS WITH LAND!

There is the "Sell objects with the land" checkbox

Did you try that?

Objects are only returned if their group is not set to the land owning group.
You could/should have set (or deeded) the objects to the group before you donated the land.

This is only of limited usefulness for several reasons:

1) some objects cannot be transferred. In fact, a lot of objects can't be transferred. mod/copy/notrans is very common. So, it has no effect on those objects.

2) if you "buy for group" a piece of land that has "sell objects w/ land" set, then all transferrable objects get *deeded* to the group. This isn't good either. Deeded objects that are returned, disappear. A no copy object that is returned will cease to exist anywhere, since there can be no backup in inventory. Also, it's possible for the "next owner" permissions to be set such that the object is no longer transferrable after it has been deeded. So, you might end up with an object that can't be transferred back to a person.

3) Objects that are not owned by the land owner are not transferred. This is probably correct behavior, but it leaves another hole.