Hi there! This will be my first post. I hope I’m clear and asking the right questions. We have a story similar to so many others: mom gets a call out of the blue from someone wanting to buy her mineral rights in Texas, left to her by her mother in Louisiana. Mom replies, “What mineral rights?” And the journey starts. She has no will, no deed, nothing else. We have a lot of work to do. We’re in WA state, Mom’s her old address is in CA. We found unclaimed royalties sent to her old address in CA, and were able to contact Sabine Oil and Gas to get her address corrected and get a copy of the DO, but we won’t receive any mail for probably a month or more. My question is: to find out the extent of where her mineral interests lie, I know that’s a job for a landman. But in others’ experience, is the operator usually willing to share their own title research with owners? Is there an art to asking them for that information? There are also royalties that are still in my deceased grandmother’s name, but we don’t have the paperwork to do an easy heirship affidavit. How likely is it that the operator will provide us information to help with that? Thanks in advance. I’m glad to be a part of this group!
Sabine will be slower to respond than 1 month. I have found them helpful to the degree of information available to the OR/DO dept. You can do some research using Texasfile.com on the known counties. Texasfile also allows you to do a Statewide search for $5 if you think other counties may be involved. Try to collect as much information as possible before you consider hiring a landman. This will save you cost and potentially define your search areas. Good luck.
Thank you, James! I did the TexasFile statewide search on your suggestion. Now there’s only one county of interest. Harrison County seems to have a pretty helpful self-service portal, so I found the deed that originally separated 41% of the mineral interests from the surface. I guess now I need to do some kind of forward search to find out if he sold or transferred them. Is there a trick to doing that, other than searching from name to name? Thanks for the tips about Sabine. The well that’s paying my mother’s royalties is still producing, but no payment has been issued since 2021, so I guess that means she has payments in suspense, unless the operator offloaded them for some reason. Thank you again!
Hi Mike, Welcome and good job on your first post. You gave enough information to get to a question and invite community input. Depending on the State where the property is located, there are regulations as to what will be necessary to clear the suspense from your Grandmother and get your Mom in a paying status with current operators. In my experience, operators are usually willing to share a few documents and may even share the requirements listed in their Title Opinion so that you have clear direction on what their attorney would consider a satisfactory resolution to the issues at hand. You might ask for copies of deeds and title requirements to help you participate in cleaning up the title.
Thank you Ryan. I’ll try my luck with the operator and see what we can get. Cheers.
When you ask the operator for the title information, they will not give you the whole title search as it was very expensive to research and is proprietary. Ask them specifically for the “paragraphs that pertain to your family as you want to update your records”. Ask them if they need any other information in order to get your mom into pay. They may want to speak to her directly or you-if you have the Power of Attorney. The operator will probably only have title as far as the grandmother because they have no need (or time) to go further forward in generations once they establish ownership as of the time the well was drilled. Up to the mineral owner’s family to keep up with that and inform the operator of any changes.
You can ask the person who called out of the blue where they got their information. Don’t decide anything about selling until you get title in good shape and claim all past royalties (buyer wants them!) Then find out about current activity. Most buyers have a good idea about pending drilling which is why they want to buy the minerals. (Our family wants to keep our royalties, so an offer to buy is nice clue to future activity.)
Some folks find ancestry.com useful for tracking down relatives.
Is there a site like the one mentioned for Arkansas? Trying to identify some inherited land with leases on them.
Mike there is no trick, just diligent work. Texas File has a good record for Harrison County. In general, your record search will progress through the grantor/grantee index system or name to name. You will need to confirm legal descriptions as you proceed as well the interest that is being transferred. This is referred to as a limited chain of title. You can try to generally limit your search by legal description, but I have not found this to be accurate enough for your purposes.
Monies that accrue to your Mother’s interest will either be held in suspense by the Purchaser (not always the operator) or forwarded to a State Unclaimed Property Division.
That’s excellent advice, thank you! Hopefully since the operator was so quick to send an updated DO it won’t take long to get my mother’s account back into pay, and get us the info to set up her online account. I think I’ve convinced her not to sell, and keep it as an investment. If I’m reading the deeds right it may be as much as 41% of mineral interests for 224 acres, so it should be worth keeping. I was hesitant to ask the offerer because I was leery about letting them know we haven’t worked out the succession or title yet. But maybe I’m being too cautious there.
Thank you James. I’m hopeful: after finding the old deed that conveyed the land but reserved the minerals, I couldn’t find any further transfers of those mineral rights as they passed to his sole heir and then to my grandmother, or afterward. I don’t know how to make sure I’m not missing anything, but finding those records was promising!
So royalties can be held by the purchaser instead? Is that typical?
Mike, you can use your information to run a check on the proposed Buyer. Just ask them what they show as the interest and how that was determined. If you get an answer that does not conform to your research, tell them you show it as 41% of 224 acres. This accomplishes two things
- It conveys that you have performed research on the interest
- It goes as a check of their forthrightness This can also afford them a chance to provide you with some title information supporting their position as to the interest in case you missed or misinterpreted documents.
Ah, excellent idea. I can do that! Thanks James!
If you know the legal or the county, you can often find the link to the property. But that normally means going to the courthouse. Nothing on line that is affordable.
As someone who has found out the hard way, relying on operators to do a quality title check or actually read title reports thet have in hand can get you in trouble. Ultimately haveing an independent land man that is totally accountable to you is the safest way to go.
The Purchaser can be the operator or a company separate from the operator.
try searching for unclaimed $ https://www.claimittexas.gov/ that link should show you who might be owed some $, what you have to do to claim them.
as for the oil producer, i’d contact county land records and maybe have a mineral rights title update done. the oil producer did a mineral rights title update but they are slow to share these with the owner (LOL). this is because oil producers kind of treat you as an adverse party. you may have to get your own done. you can contact county land records and they know the landpeople who do title research.
when oil producers drill and they cannot find an owner or the owner has moved or is deceased, they have to give it to unclaimed property. they don’t just keep the $ in suspense if they are getting letters returned to them.
it depends on the effort you put into it. you may have to have the interest probated. you may want to hire an attorney to do that. if you hire an attorney in that county, ask them for an estimate about cost, ask about the procedure. you can often find out a lot about how to do legal stuff from the first interview. https://www.lawinfo.com/mineral-rights/texas/marshall/
you may want to consider putting the mineral rights in a trust. you can ask the attorney about that. if your family does not get along, i’d avoid a trust. it is a headache for the trust adminstrator. i am the trust administrator for our family and we sort of get along about it. but when my sisters disagree, it can be quite awful. we have had to work through some stuff. and we are currently having issues. we are all adults but i think i have made some things too easy for them and they think everything is easy. i’m 73 now and i’m mindful that i will not live forever. i want a family meeting so that people can ask me questions, because someone will be trust administrator at some point. but one sister is uninterested in such a meeting. and she will be the trust administrator after me.
this is a journey. don’t treat it like “pie in the sky”. it is a business. and remember that the oil producer is not your friend. they might give you good information or not give you information that you may feel you need. our mineral rights are in ND so i can’t tell you the TX resources. you will discover things as you go along. keep a file/notebook because you will find so much information and then wonder where you put it. get organized first. don’t try to organize it 3 years down the road.
my advice is that you be transparent with other heirs, if any.
good luck.
@sheuerma Your post depends at what point you are in production. New producer will bring the record title to date and issue DO based on that information. New producer in an existing unit will in most cases accept the current pay deck and may issue a new DO. New producer in combined previously producing units will generally assume the previous producing pay deck, apply the new unit participation, and issue new DO.
Too many mineral owners expect the operator to perform more than a record title search in order to complete a DOTO or perform curative work that is the responsibility of the mineral owner. You are correct that involving a professional in establishing your title can expedite the process and help to protect your interest. It will also provide clarity as to the actual versus the perceived ownership.
Thanks sheuerma. I know I’ll have to get an independent assessment eventually. I’ll see if I can get something from the operator for later comparison though.
James, I’m ready to do the work, even though I’m totally new at this. There’s an interesting twist that I’ll need title help for. I found the original unit designations for the two leases that are paying my family’s royalties. Ive discovered that the two units have some overlap, and one of the tracts appears in both units. But it looks like only one unit included that property in our net calculation, while the other did not (those royalties were assigned to another owner). Have you seen that kind of situation before? If I’m correct, we’ve only been paid about 2/3 of what we should have gotten for the duration of the lease that excluded this tract. Granted my family should have researched it first and known what they were signing, but it seems like something that’s curable to me. What do you think?
Without inspecting the unit designations and tract allocations, it is difficult to offer a comment on the issue. You may want to contact the operator and request the unit boundaries and the tract allocations on an “As Drilled” or DO basis since this can some times change. Also request their actual calculation of your NRI, not result, of your NRI to help clarify the problem.