Company offering to close title for 20% cut of royalties

Victoria Dunham · 2019-04-22T19:47:59Z

Hi All, I'm very new to this, so please forgive my ignorance and the length of this post. I received a message last night via Facebook that I am due suspended royalties. My father inherited TX mineral rights from his GG-aunt, who died in 1942. My father died many years ago and left no will. I'd heard family stories about this inheritance, but live in a different state and had no idea how to proceed looking into it. The guy said he represents a group that looks into unclaimed royalties, and provided me with family details, names, etc, that were all correct and said he'd had quite a time finding me to let me know. He says that the royalties are suspended because I couldn't be found, and are worth a fair amount of money, even though my share is only 1/16 of the total. He warned that I didn't want these royalties to end up in the TX unclaimed funds coffers because it would be really hard to get then. The catch-- because of course there is one-- is that they will get the title taken care of for 20% of the accrued royalties, 20% of future royalties, and would pay 20% of the current and future taxes. They want you to sign a contract and are only willing to share the details and $$ amounts afterwards. An attorney friend says that he thinks this might be the equivalent of those people who go through the unclaimed cash listings, then charge people a commission for what they could get themselves filling out a single-page form online. The royalty figures he quoted me on what the claim is producing were really good-- $60k for this past January, and $1.5m over the past 1 1/2 years. But I've seen no official paperwork to verify these numbers. So two questions: Have any of you had experience with a company like this, pros or cons? If the offer has any legitimacy, I don't want to dismiss it out of hand, but I don't want to sign away my rights either. And now that I know I am owed royalties, but have no idea which company is doing the actual drilling, where do I go from here? My GG-aunt owned quite a bit of property in Beaumont TX, but that's all I have to go on. Guessing I need to hire a TX attorney (ethical and reliable), but is there any legwork I can do prior to that? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!

General Mineral Rights Discussion