My husband found an unclaimed property details in our state of California for his deceased father. It says there is a small cash amount and the type of property is mineral proceeds. He said his father kept a variety of mineral rights when he sold his real estate. Is there a way to track down the location by his name only? It says that Medallion Properties owned by Kerr made the report. I am also wondering if this is a one time amount or if these typically involve an ongoing royalty. Thank you.
Tina,
Here is a good article to read: http://www.mineralweb.com/unclaimed-oil-and-gas-royalty-a-226.html
Contact Kerr (Mcgee I am assuming), ask for their land deparment, tell them your situation. See if they can tell you the county in which this interest originated. Then check that county’s website to see if their public records are online. If not, you’ll have to go there, or hire someone to go there for you. Bottom line is that you need to determine the specific counties in which the deceased owned real estate, and may have reserved minerals. With the county names, you can then research their index by Grantee and/or Grantor names.
Kenny, Thank you for the information. I will check it out.
NOT LEGAL ADVICE
Dear Ms. Cossak,
Also keep in mind that even if you locate the deed in which your father reserved mineral rights, that doesn’t mean that he owned ALL the mineral rights to that tract of land, because somebody before him in the chain of title might have reserved some mineral rights as well.
The only way to know for sure what percentage ownership he owned in that tract’s mineral estate is to perform a mineral-title search.
Sincerely,
Philip Wynne
Thank you Philip - Do you have any idea how much that type of search costs?
Thank you Peter, I am a realtor, so I will give my title rep a call.
NOT LEGAL ADVICE
Dear Ms. Cossak,
The last time I hired a title company to run title on a tract for me, it cost me $150, but I gave them a specified time period of only about thirty years and I wanted to know the surface ownership only.
My guess is that if you contact ten title companies in your hometown and ask them for a quotation to run MINERAL title on a tract of land for you, at least five of them will respond to you with something that looks like deer in the headlights. Of the remaining five, four will tell you that they don’t do that kind of work. And you might get one willing to take on the assignment, but they will, or at least should, charge you more than $200-$300.
For me to run mineral title going back to Patent, it takes AT LEAST one full day, including trips to the abstract plant, County Clerk’s Office, District Court, and possibly Probate Clerk. The average tract takes about a day and half, and that’s if there are no major “complications” in the title search, such as having to run out a set of heirs on a mineral or royalty reservation or severance, having to order documents such as probates from another county or state, or having to run out multiple chains of title, meaning that your current tract going back in time branches into multiple tracts and you now have more than one chain of title.
I ran one tract that contained about 200 documents for one ten-year period in the 1920’s-1930’s. I ran one tract that had so many heirs that it took me three full weeks to identify them all. So my guess is that IF you are able to find a title company to run the MINERAL title for you, they probably are not going to do it for a set fee and you are probably looking at $600 or more.
Sincerely,
Philip Wynne
Tina Cossak said:
Thank you Philip - Do you have any idea how much that type of search costs?