Questions onThe Mechanics of Receiverships

General Mineral Rights Discussion
21

Dave, Charles, Buddy,

You have definitely given me a wealth of information and resources to wade through. I have run searches through all of the online resources I know of, and I believe I have the information I need to track down not just the original Receivership that was suggested for me to look up, but perhaps two more. I am going to try to cross-reference the County Clerk Record information I’ve located with a District Court Record for a lawsuit which I believe to be referenced in the leases I’ve found. As soon as I get a reply from the PACER rep and grasp using their search engine. :slight_smile:

Dave & Charles I hadn’t thought of going to the Karnes County Land Title Company, but if I can’t locate the original lawsuit to verify that I have the correct Lease, then I will approach their office and ask for them to do the search for me.

Charles, I am working with a Landman who has some joint interests with us, whose records are bit disorganized (long story, he has been successfully developing a client’s properties for the last ten years and making plenty of revenue to not need to pursue development of the interests he acquired with my grandfather), and is not in close enough proximity to my current residence for me to go rifling through and organizing his files.

All of your suggestions and recommendations aside, before I can follow through with getting money out of a Receivership or any other form of interest suspense holding ‘entity’ I will need to get Deeds and Chain of Title recorded and cleared up for the County as a whole, which poses another problem altogether.

All the same, I move forward with hopes of progress and success; wishing all of you the same as well :wink: Mathew

22

You’re welcome. Read some of the additional replies. They may help you out as well. I have a full-time job, but try to help out some people like yourself as time allows. Try to give something back, if you will.

I read replies for about two years before I joined. It became unbearable to hear some of the replies, usually from people who were not qualified to make them, or who had such a pronounced animosity against oil companies and their representatives, that all objectivity was lost, thereby clouding the issue and giving bad advice.

By and large, I think the quality of advice has gotten better. There are still a few who think that their advice is the only correct advice, but I think that is indicative of some type of ego trip that they are on.

I don’t know how many times I have taken a lease flag (name of a lessee, either past or present) and date off a Tobin map when I was under the gun, and didn’t have the time and/or authorization to use an abstract plant. 99 to 100 percent of the time, doing this resulted in me finding a legal description and the references I needed to do at least a cursory chain of title, or answer the questions that were being asked of me. It’s a great tool, and doesn’t take long at all, especially if the indexes in the Office of County Clerk are not “blind”, or lacking a legal description.

Just a few weeks ago, I implemented that methodology to help answer a question on this site (Cyndy provided me the name of the lessee), and found what I was looking for in under five minutes. I didn’t time it, but it was probably done in about three minutes.

The point? There are tricks of the trade. Experience is the best teacher. Conventional wisdom is not always right.

Mathew Brandon Love-Waraksa said:

Thanks for the info Dave… I’m still waiting to hear back from the PACER Rep on how to navigate a search of their document records according to District Courts, and how their system breaks up District Courts with respect to County. So every bit of insight will help me to better determine what to search for once I get a response back.

In the meantime I have been searching through TexasFile and a few other online County record websites to try to find the Receivership Lease itself.

My main roadblock is that the County Records through these platforms don’t make any references to “Receivership” Leases at all… I’ve found a couple of these where the Lessee is labeled as “Public” (which I’m not sure whether or not that might reference the County Clerk or is designation for something else), but none with “County Clerk” or the name of the Karnes County Clerk under the Lessee heading…

It’s all very interesting learning about the legal process by which the money for unpaid interest owners is channeled.

23

Percent not per cent. That was a typo.

24

There is at least one District Court that has jurisdiction for each of the 254 counties in Texas, but that does not mean that each county has at least one District Court in it. Some counties in sparsely populated areas band together to form the jurisdiction for a single District Court, hence the term “riding the district,” whereby one District Judge would ride his horse from county to county to hear various cases. And in heavily populated counties there are multiple District Courts that have jurisdiction over just one county. I think Harris County has more than fifty District Courts.

Mathew -

I believe Pacer is for Federal Bankruptcy Court Records, not District Court Records. There is at least one District Court for each county.

25

Federal courts are divided into Northern, Eastern, Southern, and Western Districts of Texas, not state District Courts, which usually have jurisdiction over only one county but sometimes a few more individual counties, which is where you would find suits to quiet title and similar cases.

Also, I would just make the distinction for you between a County Court and a County Court-at-Law. In the first case, the County Judge who is the chief executive of a less populated county, meaning the person who presides at the Commissioners Court, and who might or might not be an attorney, could sit as a judge for certain matters defined by statute, such as probate and receivership. In fact, in every case where I have seen a county official act as receiver for a mineral owner, it has always been the County Judge, not any other county official, who executed the lease. Karnes County is a sparsely populated county, so you might try indexing the actual name or names of the County Judge(s) who was or were in office in the appropriate time frame to try to find the lease. In more populated counties, the County Judge is precluded from exercising these duties and there is no County Court, there is at least one County Court-at-Law, whose judge has no role with the administration of the County government and who must be a licensed attorney.

Notice that for Texas there are four District Courts to search through: Eastern, Western, Northern, or Southern.

26

Oh… If you know of - and are willing to provide me with - a bit of information concerning Jason’s role in JPMorgan with respect to the Red Crest Trust (as they seem to appear in a number of leases and tax rolls jointly) it may help me to better approach making contact productively. Thanks again for the info.

I’ve noticed this about district courts in my investigations… as interesting as it’s been though I’ve become a bit overwhelmed. There are so many courts and so many cases involving oil and gas operators. On top of my not being sure of which cases are being held to review a company’s due diligence in proper distribution of production revenue, the whole thing’s taken back seat to my attempts to both locate my own properties on a map, and map past/present production sites.

Both have become daunting tasks.

27

Pete, would you mind sending me a friend request so I could ask you a few more questions? More than likely tomorrow as I am currently responding from my phone and it’s a slow way to correspond… Also I’m about to retreat to bed, lol :slight_smile: Thanks for all the info all the same. Every bit helps.

28

Hey Dave,

I was wondering if you’d send me a friend request as well (I haven’t exactly figured out how to do this on this site yet :/) as I wanted to seek a bit of clarification concerning something you posted regarding Tobin maps being used for getting at information you needed faster than you would be able to without them…

Unfamiliar with Tobin maps I’ve started researching them (yes I realize that after two years it may seem absurd the number of resources I am unaware of - or simply can’t afford - especially considering I quit my job and have been doing this almost 80 hours a week since August 2014, lol).

Any way, I do understand you work full time, and in no way would I expect replies, responses, or any personal shortcuts you would otherwise charge for; just any insight you might be willing to provide when the opportunity is available.

I would like to give a very brief overview of what I’m trying to do right now (before I continue my search for receivership leases, or accounts held in suspense - both of which are out of the order of operations that makes most sense for my current progress) if you would allow me to. Just to see if you know of any “shortcuts” for getting through this portion of the project before moving on to the next.

If you’re busy I understand, and appreciate your help as it is, which by the way provided about 4-6 hours of very helpful study material (pay attention to the little details and it’s amazing how much you can learn right ;)).

Mathew

Dave Quincy said:

Percent not per cent. That was a typo.