Recently my cousin and I were approached by a landman concerning the lease of mineral rights we hold on a farm property. We both want to lease; however, we discovered that the man to whom the farm was sold (Many years ago) apparently was also granted 1/8 of the mineral rights, with my cousin and I sharing 7/8ths of the mineral rights. We both want to do the lease, but the 1/8 owner has refused to allow the lease as he told the landman he did not want to grant access to his farm at all. The original deal was handled (long time ago) by our uncle who was an excellent land attorney and he structured many similar deals for us regarding considerable amounts of property in TX and OK. All these deals have worked out smoothly over the years to the benefit of living members of our family. I would be surprised if our uncle had left a loophole in this Young County farm sale that would prevent family members from exercising their rights to lease minerals. I do need to search out the original deed of sale, etc. and if warranted, would like a referral to an attorney if it seems we might find a way to resolve this problem of access.
Could anyone give some advice and possibly an attorney referral - if it may be possible that we can get around this problem we would very much like to move forward. Our uncle and other family members who had hands-on knowledge of these family land purchases, etc. are all deceased now and we would like to be able to research and deal with this accurately.