This is probably something that happens often . . . As many of you know, and most everyone can tell, I’m very new at this. My family has a rather large portfolio that is very geographically diverse and very small parcels of mineral rights. Today’s income is less than $1000 annually. But we’re only getting royalties in three counties and there are 31 counties where we have rights.
So I decided to start searching the deeds we have in these non-producing counties, trying to find our property and see if well activity around us. In 1933 my grandfather had purchased mineral rights in a county in KS. I have the deed. Looking at the GIS system for KS oil well, I saw that there were actually two wells that are active and have been producing since the 1970s. I double checked, and this was absolutely in the geographic area defined by our deed! I could just see all the past royalties we were owed! I was VERY excited.
The county court of court did me a favor (I guess she could tell I was not knowledgable about this stuff!). She looked into it as a favor, and said that that property had not been sold. But wisely, she suggested I contact an attorney to verify and get a letter from him stating his opinion that we did own mineral rights for that property. So I followed her suggestion, found a local attorney and sent him a scan of our deed.
After a short review, he sent me a letter and said it was his opinion that we did not hold any current rights to that property. It turns out that the man who sold the mineral rights to my grandfather, did have mineral rights. However, those rights would disappear if no well was drilled within 10 years. And those well were drilled in the 70s!
So no money for us and I had a new attorney’s fee! A definite “swing and a miss!”
I had something similar happen in Virginia where we thought we had mineral rights for coal. Grandad purchased these rights in the mid 1920s. My father asked me to go to the courthouse and start with the deed we had, and work back through time. I found the deed and found who sold the rights to my grandfather. But then I found out that there was no record of him ever owning those mineral rights. I got curious and found there were many instances where this had sold mineral rights to people and then skipped town!
So I’ve learned a valuable lesson that only cost me about $300! But unfortunately, I live in North Carolina now, so it’s cost prohibitive for me to travel to a courthouse to search and verify these deeds. But there are a lot of crooks out there!
So far I have found 44 wells on property we have no income from. I’ve got work to do!!!
All I can say is just keep plugging along, some day you may win, most days I have found, you lose. It has been costly for me and my family, but I keep on moving forward with finding answers good or bad. At least I know in my heart I tried to rectify what has happened.
MK