When I was growing up my dad always told my siblings and I that he had mineral oil rights and was going to pass it to us when he passed away. We were young and didn’t really understand it or pay it any attention. He also said he would never touch his royalty payments because they were so small and he’d rather let it add up to give us one day. My dad passed away in 2006. Neither my siblings or myself looked into his rights until my grandmother gave me a letter from an oil company that was looking for his heirs earlier this year. The letter was dated back in 2011. She also confirmed that my dad never cashed his royalty checks he had received over the years because he wanted to leave it to his children. She said he obtained the mineral oil rights before I was born. I’m now 38. After we filled out an affidavit of heirship to become owners of the rights we spoke to the oil company that had sent the letter to my grandmother. They told us that my dad had ownership of these rights since 1971, and they sold the account to another company in 2018. We spoke to the company that bought the account, whom were still waiting for to send us exactly what we own. We’ve received nothing. We’ve asked both companies about royalties paid out to my father in the past and since he’s passed away. The old company said they have nothing to do with it anymore and the new company said that the state would have whatever is owed. They gave us a website to look up unclaimed property in Texas, but I only saw a few years. How can we find the money that now belongs to us and any documentation to prove what belongs to us? We know my dad never cashed any of his checks since 1971 and he’s been deceased now 13 years.
See if the both the old and new company have a record of his holdings. Use the list from the Texas unclaimed property to start your search. See if you can find any copies of those checks as they will have descriptions on them of the properties. You may have to start with one piece of information and use it for the next clue. If you know which counties in Texas, you may be able to search the tax roles. If he was in pay status, he was supposed to be paying taxes on them.
You might look at the tax roles and see if he is still listed. You would do this by the county where the minerals or RI was held. If that doesn’t help, then you can look at someplace like TexasFile.com to research the deed records. My guess is if you were in pay status and he did not pay taxes, they were long ago auctioned off for non-payment of taxes. Unfortunately I’m thinking this was not a good strategy for him to deploy. You might contact the Texas unclaimed funds site to try to recoup what what might have been paid that he did not collect. Sometimes oil companies turn the funds over to the state…sometimes they don’t. You may need to contact the new production company to check on the unclaimed back payments and if they don’t respond you may need to get an attorney involved…if there is enough money to pay the attorney and still get some funds back.