I have a question about mineral rights. My Grandma owned mineral rights on her family farm. After the farm was sold, she received a check each month from an oil company. The location was in Fairfield, Illinois. The oil eventually dried up and the company quit drilling.
I have seen the mineral rights certificate at my Mom's house. She is elderly. Right now, there is an oil boom beginning due to fracking. I don't know if the oil companies will be able to trace ownership to my Mom. I don't know how to even go about contacting the oil companies about this. Any advice is much appreciated.
Will do, then call the county clerk and recorder and ask their recordings fee which in many states is around $10-15 and send both to them, pretty simple. I just emailed you 2 versions. I do my own version since most are not the best set up but all will work.
How does one file an Affidavit of Death and Heirship for a person WHO IS STILL ALIVE? That makes no sense to me. Maybe an Affidavit of OWNERSHIP instead. And why wouldn't an oil company be able to "trace ownership to my Mom" if a previous oil company was able to do so in the past and drill a well?
She never says that her Mom leased. It was Granny who got the checks. Then it dried up.
The Affidavit of Death and Heirship would fly, as well as an Affidavit of Ownership.
Mineral Joe's reply makes perfect sense. The death part would apply to Granny. The heirship part would put into Mom. That is what she is wanting to do.
She also never said that Granny died, Mineral Joe made an assumption, although apparently it was the correct one. Granny might have gone NCM, and the original poster might just have easily been inquiring how to get the minerals leased while Granny was not competent.
Mineral Joe was easily correct, as it was very easy to see where the poster was coming from, especially in light of her mom being called elderly. NCM was never mentioned. That was your brainchild. The question never concerned a guardianship, or how her mother could set one up. It dealt with how she could flag the fact that mom, who is elderly, is now the owner. I don't think her facts as presented would have taken anyone who knows the business in the direction of a grandmother being NCM.
Mineral Joe was spot on in his reply. An ownership affidavit might do the trick, but what he suggested would be far more effective, in that the venerable family matriarch is clearly deceased, and the poster's elderly mother is her heir.
Pete Wrench said:
She also never said that Granny died, Mineral Joe made an assumption, although apparently it was the correct one. Granny might have gone NCM, and the original poster might just have easily been inquiring how to get the minerals leased while Granny was not competent.
My Grandma died and owned the mineral rights and received checks until the well dried up. My Mom, who is 81, has done nothing with the papers. They sit in a box with my Grandma’s other papers. Thanks so much for your help and for the affidavits!
So because somebody's mother is elderly means she can't have a grandmother who is very elderly? Really? I never said NCM was mentioned, nobody who can read English would have come to that conclusion. What I AM saying is that NCM was a possibility in this case because the original post made no mention that the grandmother was deceased. And I never said the poster was wanting to know how to set up a guardianship, that was your brainchild. The facts as originally presented should have taken anyone who "knows the business" to ask "Is your grandmother deceased or not?" before suggesting to file an Affidavit of Death and Heirship for her! In the final analysis, Mineral Joe's suggestion is reasonable, but he made an assumption that nobody "in the business" should do. Just because his assumption was proven right does not mean that he should have made the assumption in the first place. You know what can happen when we assume.
Did it shock you when she confirmed that her grandmother was deceased? There was never that much to assume if you look at the original premise of her question. She was wanting to know how to put the ownership in her mother's name so anyone who wanted to lease it could find her. The facts were clear. Her grandmother once owned it, and now it is owned by her mother. Did you assume that the grandmother was in an asylum?
No, it did not shock me that she confirmed that the grandmother had passed away, my guess was that the grandmother had passed away. But that's all it was...a guess, that's why more questions were warranted on the part of Mineral Joe before assuming and throwing out advice. I made a guess and would have sought confirmation and additional information before offering advice, Mineral Joe made an assumption and then offered up advice based upon that assumption having no idea if he was correct or not.
You state, "The facts were clear. Her grandmother once owned it, and now it is owned by her mother." Are you sure about that? You assume that just because the post says so, but what if the person who made this original post is not familiar with the concepts in probate law or the laws of descent and distribution in the State of Illinois, and she is operating under a false assumption of her own? IF that were the case, wouldn't it help her to be relieved of that false assumption if at all possible? What if grandma had no Will but did have a surviving spouse who is still alive? What if grandma had a Will naming Mom as the sole heiress, it was never filed for probate, and grandma had more heirs-at-law? So it would take asking more questions in order to make your claim with determination and to offer solid advice to the poster about how to proceed.
No, I did not assume that grandma was in an asylum, and you make another assumption, that persons who are non compos mentis belong in an asylum. What a despicable and illogical leap. Again, I made NO assumptions, Mineral Joe and you did. All I'm saying is that what is shocking is that persons like you who claim to be "in the business" make assumptions that might or might not be correct, you fail to confirm or reject your assumptions, and then you offer advice based upon those unconfirmed assumptions. No sweat off YOUR back if you're wrong, I guess, but your advice could cause problems or be very expensive for the persons who you are trying to help on this Forum if it was based upon a false assumption.
Again, I'm not saying that the assumptions made in this case were false, and I'm not saying that the advice given by Mineral Joe was wrong, I'm just saying that they might be if not all the right questions are asked and answered.
No need to worry about causing her any expensive problems. The opposite is true. Mineral Joe probably saved her some money by emailing her the affidavits.
His advice was right on. It is mostly lay people who post here with questions. Quite often they leave facts out, but real pros like Mineral Joe and myself usually know where they are coming from. We know this business. You need everything spelled out. We don't.
Another example might be a question that I answered just the other day. A gent was wondering why he would get a registered letter wanting him to sign a consent to assign a lease? He was scratching his head. He had never heard of such a thing. Without knowing any of the lease provisions that were contained in his original lease, I informed him that the answer to his question would mostly likely be found in his lease form, and that it contained some type of a clause that required consent of lessor to assign. He went and pulled the lease. He then posted that the lease contained a clause that required the consent of lessor before the lease could be assigned, and that such consent would not be unreasonably withheld. Was that an assumption on my part that the lease contained a provision so described. Yes. Was it a correct assumption? Yes. How was I able to make that assumption? Through experience.
It was despicable that you would infer that someone in a family that you didn't even know might be NCM. You were the only one who brought up that particular angle. Mineral Joe or myself never even considered it. There was no basis to do so. Maybe you should apologize for thinking that her grandmother was mentally incapacitated. She was probably alot smarter than you are. Dave Quincy said:
No need to worry about causing her any expensive problems. The opposite is true. Mineral Joe probably saved her some money by emailing her the affidavits.
His advice was right on. It is mostly lay people who post here with questions. Quite often they leave facts out, but real pros like Mineral Joe and myself usually know where they are coming from. We know this business. You need everything spelled out. We don't.
I bet my last check against yours that you are not an attorney and never worked for one (or if you did, not for very long), because that attitude of "we don't need everything spelled out because we're pros" would never fly in any attorney's office, or any reputable land office either, for that matter.
In other discussions, YOU have correctly cautioned readers not to make assumptions and in YOUR comment below YOU admit that you and Mineral Joe "usually" know where people are coming from, meaning that there are times that you are completely clueless where folks are coming from without asking follow-up questions. And yet on this discussion thread you have no problem making an assumption, throwing out half-baked advice based upon that assumption, and then berating somebody for urging the very same caution that you have previously. Responsible professionals who "know this business" ask questions and confirm or reject guesses and assumptions before bloviating.
Dave Quincy said:
Quite often they leave facts out, but real pros like Mineral Joe and myself usually know where they are coming from. We know this business. You need everything spelled out. We don't.
PS Thanks for reading my postings so closely. Am I a hero type figure to you? Do you aspire to be more like me?
It is true that I have asked for more info. in the past, etc etc., but in this case Mineral Joe took the lead.
He gave a great reply. The lady who asked the question appreciated it. You were out there somewhere in La La land with the NCM thing.
Taking myself out of it completely, not knowing either one of you, Mineral Joe's advice was not lacking. He did her right. Whereas, you still come across as someone who is still trying to make that transition into a different career. It shows.
Actually, my training as a software engineer has come in quite handy in the land business, thank you very much. I can get around a runsheet database more adeptly than anybody else I have ever met, can navigate Web sites associated with land work more efficiently than most, and have created some pretty innovative software solutions for needs that my brokers have specified. That skill combined with my language ability, heirship expertise, and old fashioned hard work, have helped me survive many rounds of layoffs.
After a dozen years doing land work, I am not too prideful to admit that I don't know it all and that I do still learn things almost every day about the industry. Any person who claims to know it all, who doesn't need anything "spelled out," or who claims to be a "pro" but acts otherwise is a FOOL. I shall keep returning to this Forum to learn and to impart acquired wisdom. But speaking of returning, I ask you again since you failed to answer the first time, were you or were you not asked by the powers-that-be to leave this Forum and not return? If you were, then it seems pretty rude on your part that you are back here in the first place! Shoo, clown!