Does anyone have a good recommendation for a cost efficient genealogist in Texas? Any idea how much they charge? For the purpose of proving up certain mineral / royalty interests that were inherited intestate.
Thanks,
Alex
Start with the County where the interest are located. You have to have a place to start the searches.
You might ask a librarian in the county where you have the largest interest. They would likely know genelogists in the area. Also, Texas probably has a genealogical society with a website.
Dependent upon your issues, you may be able to use a genealogist without regard to location. I would suggest you start by trying to do the work on Ancestry.com and see what you can accomplish. Remember that all issues may not be intestate. There may be several testate issues with increased time and family complexities occur.
TY! This is in Midland County, TX; if anyone knows someone there, I appreciate it. Thanks,
Sign up for ancertry.com and do it yourself, cost you like $40, you and your family will know more about the ancestors than the person you hire. Depending on how far back you go, the person you hire or you will likely be guessing on heirs if there are a lot of kids/heirs involved at some point.
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Hello Alejandro
can you provide a bit more context on what you’re looking for? are you trying to determine parents / grandparents names? or further back?
I have access to a paid Ancestry subscription, as well as Newspapers.com. Also FamilySearch is free. Depending on what you’re looking for, I’d be happy to spend a little bit of time taking a look. I’m not a professional genealogist; but I have had genealogy as a hobby for 30 or so years.
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Sounds like you need a good landman. That’s what they do.
Sounds like more of a question for an estate attorney. In other states, after the period of time has passed for doing a probate, they can file with the court for a determination of heirship, defining who the heirs are according to the intestate succession rules. I’m not an attorney and don’t know about Texas law, but that may be another step that you could take.
Good reply @Ryan_Fairbanks. In many instances you can lower legal costs through the documentation of a relevant family tree and testate successions. Any attorney will need to verify the information, but this can significantly reduce legal costs and time for the project. Most experienced practitioners will have contractors for this work, so it will depend on the comfort of @Alejandro_Padua to perform this work on his own.
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Yeah, that makes sense. I’m enough of a family history and DIY nerd that I do that kind of research on a pretty regular basis and can see the value and time savings in being able to provide that information to the attorney instead of having to pay them to conduct that research.
Ive never been a landman, but have dabbled in writing title opions. From my experiences as a title attorney, a landman nor title attorney building a family tree is not part of their job due to the risks involved for the companies that they represent. Building a family tree to see who owns mineral acres with a 50-100 yr gap in title is not easy and requires a lot of guess work, which title attorneys are not in the business of doing and we will leave it in the estate of the last know heir which gets the original poster unfortunately but its how we save ourselves from the liability of guesswork. To the OP, like I said above, sign up for an ancestry account, spend a day or 2 to create a family tree and take it to the operator in question once youre done to see if it satisfy’s their needs and try to work with them for free advice on getting the matter settled. If that doesnt work, then you will need to locate the probates/wills of the person that you believe you are getting the interest from and keep going backwards if its multiple generations, you can call the Couny Clerk or Court Clerks office or email them to see if they have your ancestors will/probate that they could mail you a copy of if its not available online. If none of that works, 1st thing you need to think about is how many acres/money do you think the interest(s) might bring in? Its going to require a lot of work on your end or paying someone else to do it which will not be cheap at all and if its a small interest youl will likely end up paying more to figure it out than the money you make off the property. Good luck to you Alejandro
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This is a SOP for my business. It allows for tighter control of legal costs. There are several caveats for those considering this type of work.
- Documentation is required, so an Ancestry Tree is not documentation and can be misleading.
- A chain of title must be followed or the research just becomes a family history.
- Intestate succession is based on the statutes of the State where the property is located. Research this first to prevent unnecessary mistakes.
- Documentation can be confusing to the novice, so have have a professional as backup support. I encourage people to try and do this work if they have some level of computer online literacy. It can reduce costs and provide clarity.