My sister and I recently inherited mineral rights, some in North Dakota Bakken Field not leased and some leased and producing near Bakersfield, California, in Kern County. We don’t live in either of those states.
We have been told California uses a probate referee to set value to forward to the California probate process.
We hired a mineral land title research firm who had done work for Occidental Oil in finding us recently for a desired new lease area near Wasco. They researched Kern County for all records of our farming Grandparents and Great Grandparents back to 1900 and issued a report of areas we have shares, the original recorded deed numbers, the recorded leases, and the share amounts (some in pools). We thought this would suffice to submit to a probate referee.
The attorney we hired to look at this seems working outside their area of expertise and not comfortable with legal descriptions of metes and bounds and shares (or pool shares) or the results of land companies that do research for oil companies to find owners and shares. I find it hard to believe that initial mineral title records with recording number and county file number, recorded lease with recorded file number, share percentages defined by the research land company we hired that does this for oil companies wanting to lease, and income receipts is not adequate to establish appraisal value for submittal to the California probate referee to set value.
Has anyone encountered this scenario and obtained good results with a mineral rights oriented legal firm in Bakersfield area? We are disappointed in our attorney so far.
*We also ran into this in North Dakota, McLean County mineral rights, ending up discharging one attorney, hired another very competent firm and interesting it went smoothly and was completed in a month. It is beginning to seem the same sequence is happening again in California with our attorney not comfortable or working outside an area of expertise to identify description and value.