My wife received an offer to purchase mineral rights for property that we were not aware of. A company was performing title work in 20-4N-4W and found an old oil & gas lease for my wife’s great grandmother. Her probated estate (in KS) passed interest in all real property to relatives. However, the property in Oklahoma may have been sold, gifted, or left out of the will/probate, and no documentation regarding mineral rights has been found.
We did not know this property even existed until we received a letter in the mail offering to purchase the mineral rights and handle the curing and probates of three estates to make the title marketable in Oklahoma. My wife may have the rights to 16.67 net mineral acres, and the offer was $15,000. We declined the offer, but are interested in pursuing this further. What attorney costs might we be looking at to deal with probate issues, and is there any activity in the lower SE portion of 20-4N-4W? Any help/advice is appreciated.
Richard Winblad has commented extensively on probate issues on the forum. Search on his name in the forum topics and in the directory. Since the estate has already been probated in Kansas, it may be rather simple to file the foreign probate in Oklahoma in the counties that have mineral rights.
There is a horizontal well going into section 20 from a surface location in 29. Campolina 1-29-20USH. You do want to get into pay status for that well and any future wells. Plus, get any back royalties from the Shallow production unit above it. RimRock Resources controls the horizontal well. Daylight Petroleum may be controlling the shallow field.
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It is possible to handle several generations of deceased individuals in a single probate action. It is extremely unusual for the need for anybody but the attorney to physically attend a hearing. This can be done even if some location or identity of the distant cousins is unknown.
By the way, even if the Kansas probate mentioned the Oklahoma minerals, the Kansas court could not have transferred them.
Thank you, I thought we would need to deal with separate probate actions for each relative. Very helpful.
Thank you for the information. We received another offer, this time for $41,000, shortly after my post. I think the issue we may have with probate is the lack of documentation of mineral rights. I’ll certainly search for Richard Winblad’s comments - thank you!
When I get offers like that, I assume that someone knows something I don’t know and they are pretty sure they are going to make a profit off of me. I slow down and find out what is going on as I would rather make that profit instead. And I am will to let time take its course and wait for it. Whether you sell or not, you need to get the probate figured out because it has to be correct to either sell or get royalties. The companies that are buying are buying your future royalty stream. For every offer that I have had, the offers have been lower than the royalty stream my engineer had calculated for my acreage. Not saying that is true for everyone.
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Phil442…Was the offer for $15,000. per acre or for all 16.67 acres?
$41,000 per acre? To me that offer sounds too good to be true.
Sorry for the confusion. The offers were for the entire 16.67 acres. I wish they were per acre!
I have acreage in the area and have been offered more than that. My interests are leased on 3/16ths & some on 1/5th.
Somebody has really good information to be making such an offer. Check your great-grandmother’s name here:
Check https://kansascash.ks.gov/up_main.html
Mineral Interest Escrow Account Search
I didn’t think Phil meant $41,000 was per acre but the $15,000. wouldn’t have been unreasonable per acre if it is leased for or HBP for 3/16th or more. We live in 4N, 4W and there is lots of drilling going on all around Lindsay in Garvin and Stephen’s County. We sold some of our royalty for $20,000 per acre last year in Stephens County only a few miles south of here.