I was told yesterday by an oil company that setup a trust account to have our family royalty payments going into. I was informed since the funds are in a trust we have to get it transfered out the trust name into ours. Do anyone have knowledge of how this procedure works? And if so what's the time frame it takes to resolve it? This land is in Texas by the way.
typically, you would need the Trustee of the Trust execute a Mineral Deed transferring the rights from the Trust to the individual beneficiaries.
The oil company want give me the name of
I'm not a lawyer, let's get that out of the way. Here's what I do know. When a Trust is established, it must outline who the Beneficiaries of the Trust are, the person or persons who are to benefit from the Trust during its existence. Often times, the Beneficiary or Beneficiaries can change based upon circumstances outlined in the original Trust Documents. And the Trust Documents must specify who the Trustee of the Trust will be, sometimes it's a person, sometimes it's a bank or law firm or other fiduciary. If you are a Beneficiary and you want ownership of your portion of some minerals, you will have to get a Mineral Deed from the Trust to you. This is not a big deal at all, can probably be done in an hour or two. But, depending how the Trust was set up, the Trustee might not be able to convey the minerals to you at all because the conveyance would violate the Trust Agreement. If you cannot get a Mineral Deed, ask if you can see the Trust documents.
Ok thanks I'll give them a call in the morning. The Oil company setup the trust they never contacted us at all. Just so happen we went to check on the deeds & that's when the court enlightened us. Do you think if I ask the oil company division order department for the trustee info they'll give it to me?
You've totally lost me now. The oil-and-gas company set up the Trust that owns the minerals, and YOU are the Beneficiary? I don't understand. Good luck.
This sounds like the oil company may have gone to the court and said that the mineral owners could not be found. An attorney - ad - litem may have been appointed to represent the lost/missing mineral owners. In this process a trust could have been created to hold the royalties for subsequent distribution when the mineral owners were found. In effect the court gave a lease in the name of the trust. This enabled the oil company to drill. I suggest you get a full copy of the entire court record, including all the pleadings and ruling. Hopefully it will include the title opinion. If not, then you can ask the oil company for it. You will need title history, at least from name (s) in the ruling, forward to you. You will likely need to work with a title attorney. It may be that the process will require you to go through the court and appointed trustee to get your minerals distributed out of the trust. If you do not own 100%, then the trust will continue for other missing owners. I have heard of this kind of trust situation, but it is not very common. Good luck.
I suspect TennisDaze has figured out the riddle and is correct. Typically, the trust is only executed to allow the execution of a lease. Its not like a typical trust.
She is spot-on with the rest of her advice.
Thanks for your reply I followed Tim & Pete's advice & I was able to finally talk with the trustee. Now I have a bigger problem because he refuses to give me copy of the trust or even view it. He claims that its a mistake because he's in Arkansas and the company has the same last name as my great, great, great grand father. Which is fine, but we have the actual deeds to the property. This has been an ongoing issue sine 1916-1918 when my GGGF refused to sign his land over & was beaten left for dead & his wife & kids were ran off their property. Of course this was in East Texas. The money is being sent to a trustee which happens to be an Oil Company with our exact last name Humble. Do you have any suggestions? I'll greatly appreciate it
you are going to need to hire a lawyer to get to the bottom of this and to, possibly, force legal action.
One other thing I thought about last night, perhaps the oil-and-gas company didn't go to court at all but simply held royalties IN SUSPENSE and this guy is calling it a Trust? He does says in his original post that the company has the funds in a Trust ACCOUNT.
I inquired about if any royalties are in suspense and if there were any unleased interest & the answer was no. And no Pete I'm not just calling it a trust the county clerk informed us that it's a trust.
If the county clerk is calling it a trust, then it's probably on file at the courthouse and available for public reading. Go on TexasFile.com and look it up.
Good luck,
Pat