In my specific case, the decedent doesn’t own 100% of the rights. They just have a tiny, fractional ownership. In some cases it’s just royalty interest. I’m not sure how much value there would really be. We’ll try to get things cataloged and evaluated. If there’s some value, I’m sure the heirs will step up.
But I’m still curious about this issue in general. With most other assets, eventually they go somewhere. Land will go to the county for unpaid taxes, financial accounts go to the state’s unclaimed funds, etc. But with rights, there doesn’t seem to be anything that would cause them to be forfeited like that. It seems like they would stay in the decedent’s name forever since there’s no taxes or payments that would go unpaid and cause them to be forfeited.