My sister and I have inherited shares in 2 gas wells in Logan County. The checks come from Diversified. They were unhelpful. Logan County treated me like an idiot. I have done a lot of research. I know the APIs of the wells, land parcels, the surface owner, and other information from a quit claim deed. Diversified requires a Real Estate Probate. because my mother died in NC. Can someone recommend a lawyer? It looks like that is my only option.
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I am not giving legal advice, just experience from our probates. If your mom lived in NC, but owned minerals in WV, then it is highly likely that you will have to have the probate done in NC with a NC attorney and then a “foreign” or ancillary probate filed in WV in the counties where the minerals are located through a WV attorney before you can get the royalties into pay status for the new heirs. Each state has their own rules as to how simple or complicated that might be. If no NC attornies are on the directory above, then you can look up the bar association of NC and find a family estate attorney to help you. They may in turn be able to recommend someone in WV to do the “foreign” filing.
There are two possibilities here. If your mom’s estate was probated in NC, and the estate is still open, the executor can transfer the property to the heirs. Based off the unhelpfulness of Diversified, I’m going to assume that either the estate wasn’t probated, or it was closed already. Then you’ll have to do an ancillary probate here in West Virginia.
Kyle- Does WV require a probate in the state of domicile of the decedent before allowing a probate for an out of state owner?
M_Barnes continues to tell folks they need to probate in the state that the decedent lived in before filing in the state where the property is located. For the most part, that isn’t necessary. Each state is different for sure.
I said I was speaking from my own experience which was that our relatives died out of state from where their minerals were and we needed to file in the home state and then in the mineral state and that the Logan poster would likely need to see if that situation applied to his state. Each state does have its own rules.
I closed probate in NC. I thought that was all I needed to do. The problem I am having is when filing the ancillary it requires a description of the real estate and then the worth.
The surface owner of the wells is my relative (maternal ggm). However, the tax parcels are listed under the railway.
So do I have a stake in the land or the mineral rights?
The quit claim mentions an agreement with Amherst. When I contacted Logan County they indicated they could not help.
No, there are a few samples of forms online, and if I recall correctly, one of them is specifically for the situation where there was no probate, and even no will. West Virginia is definitely different from other states. We have such a common problem with oil and gas rights being stuck in the name of someone who died decades ago that our legislature thought it was important to make it relatively easy to fix. Relative to other states.
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