I have a question I hope some of you can answer. Several years ago my mother and her brothers owned land with mineral rights in the Alvy district of Tyler County and all have since passed away. When they sold the land to a land holding company in 1978 they reserved the mineral rights except we found the transferr deed said "reserved mineral rights until all siblings have been deseased" and then the rights would pass to the company who bought the land. However, this company was dissolved before all of these siblings passed so what should then happen to these mineral rights? The mineral rights are still listed in the name of the original owners in the tax rosters and a cousin has been paying the taxes on them. Anyone have an idea who would really won these mineral rights?
Thank You.
Joanna, I think the full language of the deed would have to be known to have an opinion.
Without knowing anything else, the minerals passed to the stockholders of the holding company in alignment with the board resolution and document transferring the rights to the stockholders.
BUT, who knows. Can't know without running title and interpreting the 4 corners of the instruments involved.
One note to add to the previous replies. Unless the counties around Tyler does something differently than other Texas counties, you guys are paying taxes on the surface acres, not the mineral acres so I don't believe this has any bearing on the issue. However, I'm definitely not an attorney; but, just because a company went South, doesn't mean that someone didn't gain control of the deeded acres as written in the original deed.
r w kennedy said:
Joanna, I think the full language of the deed would have to be known to have an opinion.
Dear Joanna,
What a great question!!! I hope you will be able to tell us the rest of the story someday. For once I don't have an opinion. The purchaser apparently was a better negotiator than a business manager and may not have recorded the deed. If the asset has enough value, and Tyler is a "first in time, first in right" , and the transfer wasn't properly recorded, I hope the tax payer can file a quiet title action. I think Buddy C knows how to do this stuff.
See his comments on "Life Estates" This is almost as fun as geology.
Gary L Hutchinson
I was not very clear about this location.........it is is Tyler County West Virginia and I am sure the mineral rights taxes are seperate from the land taxes.
Bigfoot said:
One note to add to the previous replies. Unless the counties around Tyler does something differently than other Texas counties, you guys are paying taxes on the surface acres, not the mineral acres so I don't believe this has any bearing on the issue. However, I'm definitely not an attorney; but, just because a company went South, doesn't mean that someone didn't gain control of the deeded acres as written in the original deed.
r w kennedy said:
Joanna, I think the full language of the deed would have to be known to have an opinion.
What do you mean "four corners"? and how does one go about a title search?
Thanks,
Joanna
Buddy Cotten said:
Without knowing anything else, the minerals passed to the stockholders of the holding company in alignment with the board resolution and document transferring the rights to the stockholders.
BUT, who knows. Can't know without running title and interpreting the 4 corners of the instruments involved.
Best
Buddy Cotten
Mineral Manager
Joanna, the four corners of the document means you consider everything in the document whether there be conflicting wording in the document to determine the true intent.
I think that one line was pretty clear, reserved mineral rights until all siblings were deceased. But what does that mean exactly? Could the siblings have willed the mineral rights to their heirs until the last sibling passed? Could the siblings have sold the rights up until the last one died? I don't know and before I could even hazard a guess on those hypothetical questions, I would have to read the entire document. Better yet, to have a professional, lawyer or landman, read the document to determine intent if it's not perfectly clear to you.
Just a wild thought, if as each sibling died, the minerals they owned passed to their heirs, they would no longer own them when the last sibling died. Did the siblings still have the right to sell the minerals while they were alive? You need a professional to look at the entire document.
I had a similar scenario happen once in my career, except in my case the company bought the minerals outright, they were never subject to any life estate. The company dissolved, and like Buddy said, the ownership of the minerals then transferred to the stockholders, in their individual capacities, in proportion to their former ownership interest in the corporation. My client decided not to lease the minerals to that tract because the well on the neighboring tract was a dry hole, but if they had not changed their minds, that's who I would have leased, each individual stockholder ("only" sixteen in this case)!
I agree about having to read the document word for word before expressing an educated opinion, but just based upon what has been stated here, my uneducated opinion is that none of the siblings could sell their portions and when one died that sibling's portion was divided among the others remaining, when the next one died THAT sibling's portion was divided among the others remaining, and so on until the last surviving sibling received all the benefits from the minerals until his or her death, when the mineral estate then transferred to the "land holding company's" individual stockholders.
By the way, unless the deed in which the life estates were created prohibited it, it IS possible for one sibling (A) to convey his or her portion to anybody else (B) for the life time of that one sibling (A). It's called an "embedded life estate."
Finally, since all the named siblings who reserved the life estates are deceased, and since the individual stockholders would have gained title to these minerals after the corporate dissolution, it seems to me that your cousin is paying taxes on something that he does not own. Worth checking out!
It sounds like a potential case for quiet title action to cleanup and possibly get the minerals back. Obviously that would require the work of a qualified West Virginia attorney.