Hello and thank you for welcoming me to your group. My husband & I are very new to this sort of thing and need help, advice and understanding before moving forward. We were contacted recently by a landman regarding 22-9N-6W in Grady County, OK. His client is looking to purchase the mineral interest in the section from us for a specified amount of money per net mineral acre. He also attached the Oil & Land Lease of the above mentioned area showing 160 acres. Can anyone tell me exactly what this means and how all of this works? Also, is there a way to find out if we have more leases or do we have to wait for someone to call us? This particular lease dates back to 1997. Who knows how many more, if any, are out there with the family name listed?!
We've had calls like this in the past for other leases and we've always 'done nothing' but am not sure if we should continue with that approach or not.
Again, thank you in advance for your understanding of our lack of knowledge and your patience and helpful advice.
If the lease has a 160 acre legal description on it you probably have an undivided interest (along with many other mineral owners) in that 160 acres.
You could have more minerals and/or leases. You can do a search of the family name on https://okcountyrecords.com
It does not cover all counties, but a good portion of them.
To search Grady County you will need to go to https://idocmarket.com/# and join in order to search.
This is where I would start. Unfortunately the records only go back to the mid 90’s.
I would ask the landman you are dealing with to provide you with some documents where it changed hands in your family. With any luck there could be a probate that would list all minerals owned by that family member.
Hope that helps. Doing nothing gives you nothing. Check the Oklahoma Secretary of State website for the name of the person on that lease to see if that family member may have money being held by the state.
If you would like to friend me and send me the family members name or post it on here I would be glad to look a couple other places that you can’t access without paying monthly fees.
Look under Unclaimed Property at the Secretary of State website.
Wow! This is great information Darla and I really appreciate it, thank you so much! Let me see what I can do on my end with the info you provided and see where that gets me.
More importantly, I was skeptical of the 'landman' calling, out of the blue, and was afraid it was a scam as we've always received letters and not phone calls. Guess I've got my work cut out for me now with the research.
Again, thank you so much for your help :)
The 'landman' calling out of the blue can be a good thing... it was how my family discovered my grandfather had 10 net mineral acres in one section and 2.5 net mineral acres in another section, both sections in Grady County. With a trip to the county clerk's office I was able to find the documents and do an 'affidavit of death and heirship' to get the minerals into family member names who had no idea the minerals existed... all from a 'landman' calling out of the blue.
Note: Although I did the 'affidavit' I got the family attorney to be the affiant, which he did at no charge. I filed the 'affidavit' with the county clerk.
Thanks to the information Darla provided, I am on a good trail of 'other' leases and like you Don, have discovered there may be more that we knew nothing about.
Is there a way to know, or a calculation to figure out, how many net mineral acres are on a specified area of land? The lease we have in hand for this particular deal is 160 acres.
'Landman' is calling/emailing again to check on our interest in selling the tract, and possibly any others in Grady County & I'm not sure what he means when he said...'we have attorneys that we work with that can cure title defects to help with the sell'. Can anyone decipher?
I'm not sure we are willing to move as fast as he is...Is this something everyone else deals with too?
That's great!
There is no way to be certain about how much acreage you own within that 160 acres unless you run the title at the courthouse or hire someone to do it for you. Have you checked Garvin County? If you find something in Garvin I would be willing to take a quick look at it to see how complicated your title is.
A title defect would be if it is in your parent's or grandparent's names and it needs to be put into their childrens names. Or James Paul Smith deeded to someone using the name JP Smith instead of his full name. There would need to be an affidavit stating that they are the same person. There are a lot of things that could be considered defects. If you have enough interest their company might pay for the title curative or take the cost of it off the price they will pay you.
If it is very much acreage there will probably need to be a probate done to get names changed to make the minerals marketable. This will cost between $2,700 and $5,000 depending on the attorney and how complicated the estate.
There was probably a cover letter with the original lease that identified the NMA's... I don't know if the leasing company is still operating or not, but you might try them. Then call Linn Operating and see if they might share their information. Linn is the current well operator of the Arterberry 1-22 well in your section 22-9N-6W. Their number is 405-749-3496.
As Darla said, "There is no way to be certain about how much acreage you own within that 160 acres unless you run the title at the courthouse or hire someone to do it for you." As I recall it took me a couple of hours running down the documents on my grandfather's minerals and I am just a novice.
Thank You for my acceptance to the forum and the Grady grp!
I am new to this as well , thanks goes out to Tiffanie for sharing her story, and Darla for all the info . My story is almost identical to Tiffanie’s scenario. I finally opened my eyes and the last offer was a phone call, after that phone call i dug out the offers and found the well pumps and then found the operator company, i was able to call them and confirm suspended royalties they heald. After finding a small piece of info i called and started a probate with one of the attorneys from this forum. 10N-5W is the basic area , curious as to activity in that area , i have been trying very slowly to hunt info and read and learn, any and all info is very much aprreciated . Thanks