Nancy M. and I had talked about this lately and I thought I would ask. Has any one on any of these sites been sued by partition? If you have please post the details and results. The oil companies are now threating owners with partition suits to obtain their minerals, when an owner does not sign one of the company leases. The company will contact an owner who is already leased on a tract and talk them into filing a partition suit. The company can not file the suit but, you can bet they will front the money and more to do so if they so desire. That is a way they try to get around forced pooling in Wv. There have also been threats of sidestepping/pulling an owners tract out of a proposed drilling unit because the mineral owner has not signed a company lease. When the owner asks for changes in the lease then the company starts their threats. Would like to hear from those who have had issues with these two topics or any other interesting happenings. Thanks in advance.
Well, I guess we are the only ones on here to get a threat of partition. Today in the mail, we got our letter from Antero's lawyers threatening to file partition against us. Good old Antero!!
I’ve worked with a number of people who have had partition suits, either in the threat stage or in the lawsuit stage. Mostly they have been tiny interests that weren’t worth fighting over. We’ve always been able to work out a lease if that was what we wanted to do. Some of them we just decided to let go because it wasn’t worth it.
They will go around a property, and they will use partition suits to get property. There had been some discussion on this forum and other places online suggesting that the code doesn’t allow for these partition suits, but the courts are allowing them. If someone decides to challenge in court, then we’ll see. In the meantime it’s business as usual.
Kyle, I was a Federal Firearms Dealer for 21 years and we had a law called a "Straw Purchase". If some do not know what that is I will explain. When say Bob had a criminal record and he could not buy a firearm. Bob contacts Bill and gives the money to Bill to buy the firearm and then Bill gives Bob the firearm. These two individuals broke the law. The gist is, Bob supplied the money and obtained the firearm under false pretenses. This scenario sounds like what Antero does when they file a partition suit. They do not own the property but, they pay for another signed heir to file a suit to get your property. If that is not obtaining something under false pretenses then we are all in trouble.
Sept 2014 ruling on partition suit. Pass this on to your neighbors.
http://www.spilmanlaw.com/resources/attorney-authored-articles/envi...
Thanks DT. Very good news. Especially for those of us who are being threatened with a partition suit.