Doddridge County Mineral Rights and property tax issue

I am new to this forum and not sure where to begin. I was served with papers concerning EDCO MINERALS who purchased mineral/oil rights due to delinquent taxes. This is the first I’m hearing of this as I had no idea I had an interest in this property. There are numerous people listed as heirs and EDCO wants us to pay a $3200 + bill to retain ownership. With so many others involved, I don’t know where to begin. Several years ago, I was contacted about some mining on a different property but never had to deal with a tax issue before. I also would like to find out if there are other properties I may have rights to. This was initially left to my grandmother who passed away years ago and I have no way to communicate with the other heirs. Any advice? Thank you, Denise Bailey

Do I understand that the property owner (Edco) has not paid property taxes and they are going after those with mineral interests?

They did pay the back taxes which were minimal and what I received is a notice from the WV Auditor’s office indicating that if we pay the taxes and a $3000 bill for service/title examination, then we can retain the property. The problem is that this was my first notice that this even existed. There are approximately 30 people listed (other heirs) and I have no idea how to communicate with those people.

Hi Denise, My sister and I had then exact thing happen a couple years ago. It seems like EDCO’s main function in life is to try and snag property/mineral rights by looking at delinquent tax notices. There’s a database that I used to have the link to, but lost it. EDCO was all over the place in there. We had mineral rights on a couple other properties but did not know about the one that the Auditor sent the notice about. Kind of hard to tell whether you want to pay the $3k or not. If it is being drilled/mined and generating income or you think it might be in the near future, then maybe it is worth it. Tough thing to pay $3k when I bet the delinquent tax was probably less than $20. Seems like a crooked thing between the WV gov’t and some companies/lawyers to either gain property for pennies on the dollar or to extort the rightful owner into paying to retain the rights.

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