Hello my name is Sharon White and I’m writing in regards to my husband’s (David) inherited mineral rights in Ritchie County WV . I’m writing to everyone in hopes that someone can help us. I’ll just start at the beginning.
Back in March 2023 we received a letter in the mail from Antero Resources, a lease agreement for gas & oil mineral rights that we supposed to have inherited through my late Grandmother who passed away in 2014. Lol you know the old saying . " I wish I could get an inheritance from a long lost cousin" well this felt just like that. Anyways. My husband David, never knew his father’s side of the family he knew of them but because of his father and mother divorcing when he was just a baby he never met his father or that side. So of course we wanted to look into this further before signing any lease. The lease stated we had 0.50000 AC in Ritchie county Clay district. Small I know but keep reading it gets better. So we started researching and found out that due to a false affidavit of heirship that my aunt filed saying she was the only child of Anna Titus See my husband’s father died in 1995 19 years before his grandmother. Sarah David’s Aunt knew about my husband and 4 other of David’s siblings. The affidavit wasn’t even completely filled out. Look it up on Ritchie IDX unders Sarah Mae Bennett if you want.
So in 2014 my husband and his siblings would have stepped into their dad’s spot and should have.
So in 2023 Sarah passed away and in her death bad she admitted she lied and said she had a brother and she loved him very much.
So in 2023 Antero had to get their titles right and that’s when we first heard of Mineral Rights.
During our research we found more than just that 1/2a. Sarah received right around 400a. She was leased with Antero and EQT
We have asked Antero for a full accounting on what is owed to us from 2014. They have admitted they owe us but they say * sign the lease and we will pay it" We do not want to sign any new lease until we get what is owed to us. They are holding our money hostage. Not to mention Sarah’s Husband Ritchard B Bennett and there children are all leased and still getting paid our money. We haven’t got one red cent from Antero. Antero sent us division orders for the new units we are on we signed them but the interest % is so low it’s a fraction of a fraction. But I think they are lying to us. They have Sarah in the new units that just started up in 2025. Now tell me how does a dead woman sign new pooling orders. Also her husband died in April of this year and he is in the units along with their children. So tell me how the interest % is correct? We have spoke to a couple of attorneys but they won’t touch the case because of the fraction of a fraction interest that is shown. We have caught Antero in so many lies. They tried telling us that Sarah never received a bonus because she died before she signed a lease. What?! Sarah was signing leases with them since 2014!!! I’m at my wits end with this. I have proof of everything but I don’t know where to go with it.
Any suggestions please let me know. Also has anyone been through a similar situation. Let me know
I know you’ve already dismissed the idea of hiring legal counsel, but you’re not going to get anywhere until you do.
This site has tremendous amount of good advice, but you need more than free advice.
Tim’s right that free advice only gets you so far here. But the reason the attorneys you already called passed is the key. They were royalty-recovery lawyers looking at a fraction-of-a-fraction interest and no obvious payday. That interest is small because Antero is still paying off the old chain of title, the one built on Sarah’s affidavit. Until the heirship is corrected by a court or a proper affidavit, their numbers stay wrong, and her name keeps landing in new units because the record still points to her estate.
The lawyer you want is a West Virginia title or heirship attorney willing to work the fraud angle, a different specialty than the ones who turned you down. And I wouldn’t sign a new lease before the accounting is settled. Signing can be read as accepting the interest they assign you.
A few things in your reasoning track legally, and a couple of details are worth sharpening (I’m not a lawyer, so treat this as general information, not advice for your specific situation):
Where your logic holds up:
If Sarah’s lease included a general warranty of title (standard in most oil and gas leases), she — not Antero — would be the one who “warranted” clear title. A warranty like that shifts the risk of a title defect onto the person who signed it, not onto the lessee who relied on it in good faith.
Antero relying on a properly executed affidavit of heirship to cure a title gap is standard industry practice in intestate situations. If they followed that process correctly, it’s hard to make a trespass or fraud claim stick against them — they didn’t misrepresent anything, they relied on a sworn document.
Affidavits of heirship generally do need to come from someone with personal knowledge of the family (an heir or someone who knew the decedent well), sworn under oath — you’re right about that mechanism.
Worth correcting: you can’t sue Sarah directly now that she’s deceased. Any fraud claim would have to be brought against her estate (through probate) or against her heirs to the extent they were unjustly enriched — and that’s subject to WV’s statute of limitations and probate deadlines, which may have already run depending on when the fraud was discovered.
Whether the husband/kids had knowledge affects whether they could personally be liable versus just being heirs who inherited a problem they didn’t create — that’s a fact-specific question a probate or title attorney would need to dig into.
Your closing point is probably the practical reality: pursuing an estate claim against a deceased person, over what may be a modest interest, often costs more in legal fees than it recovers — which is exactly why attorneys shy away from these. Signing the leases/division orders Antero already sent and collecting the back pay is usually the path of least resistance. If you want to be sure you’re not leaving money or a valid claim on the table, a WV oil-and-gas title attorney (not a general practice one) would be the right person to do a quick title opinion — many will do a flat-fee review before you commit to anything bigger.
I would think that probably Sarah’s husband forged her name. So anything he signed is not legal. Most likely the lease broker that made these mistakes is trying to cover for themselves and Antero’s. What ever you do don’t sign the lease until you get everything corrected. Chances are you may own more than you think. If you think you only own a fraction then why would you sign a lease to get practically nothing and miss out of a possibly a lot bigger pay day? Get Antero to tell you the amount you would get if you signed the lease. I bet they won’t tell you. Prayers.