I own some mineral rights in South Eastern Wyoming and this year when my lease ended I leased with a different company cause their offer was much better, but now (3 months later), they are saying my ownership doesn't include the executive rights to sign a lease on half the mineral rights. Sounds like bull to me. My family has been leasing these same mineral rights sense the 1960s and this has never come up before. Exactly who has the right to sign?
Dear Mr. Hudson,
There are five generally accepted elements of mineral estate ownership. Those are:
1. The right to lease (the executive right).
2. The right to receive bonus payments.
3. The right to receive rental payments.
4. The right to receive a cost free share of production (royalty payments)
5. The right of ingress and egress (the right to come on the property to remove the minerals).
As you can see, the executive right is an elemental part of the rights of mineral ownership. As such an elemental right, it is capable of being reserved or conveyed.
Hi, William -
The company should be willing to send you copies of whatever document(s) they found where the executive rights were severed from the mineral rights and down to today.
You can contact whoever has them today and ask them to assign the rights back to you. You might have to try and buy them back if they are getting all of the Bonus every time they lease the land.
The owner of the executive rights has the right to sign. It's entirely possible that your family has been leasing their minerals since the 1960's not aware that they owned only half of the executive rights. Any lease that they would have signed would not necessarily have mentioned that they owned only half of the executive rights, almost surely would NOT say so. All the lease would likely say is that they were leasing X number of acres and give the legal description, it would not specify that they only had 1/2 of the executive rights. And the owner of the other 1/2 of the executive rights would sign an identical lease for the same (X) number of acres.