My wife and her sister were willed mineral rights on properties in OK and AR. This may be a dumb question but does each beneficiary get 100% of 1/2 the land mineral rights ( do they split the property?) or is it joint ownership of 100% of the land
sorry, I am a newbie and learning. I am a CPA but new to mineral rights.
This will depend on the language in the will. Generally if the will simply says I give 1/2 of my minerals to each of my daughters, then they will each own 1/2 of the parent’s mineral interest in the entire tract. As minerals are subdivided over the years, there can be many fractional interest owners in a tract. If the will says something like I give my minerals in E/2 of the section to Daughter A and my minerals in the W/2 of the section to Daughter B, then they would own in separate tracts.
thanks for reply. it is just a general bequest in will - no mention of specific property “I devise all of my property to sister 1 and sister 2”; thinking about it a bit, from a practical standpoint what if a person leaves MR to say 8 unrelated folks? to have those 8 unrelated folks have a 1/8th stake in the property. then an operater writes a royalty check - is someone resonsible for writing checks to the other 7?
Each mineral owner signs a lease and is paid directly. If they place the minerals in a jointly owned entity (LP, LLC, Trust, etc.), then the entity will be paid.
Generally speaking, this would refer to the residue of the estate, it does not require any legal descriptions to be operative.
To your hypothetical about who is responsible for payment, the operator (or sometimes the mineral buyer) is responsible for payment to each of the owners if each own individually their interest. So, in your case, each sister would receive payment from the paying entity.
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Adding to what Rick said, it is not unusual for a mineral interest to start out with one owner and then end up with over 50 (or even over 100) owners with different fractions. Each fractional owner would get paid their specific fraction times the royalty in the lease.
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