Hi, have a question about paying taxes for a group of heirs who have mineral rights in Doddridge. Basically the rights go back to my great great grandfather so at this point we have no idea how many heirs there are.
My parents have been paying the taxes since 2016, and my mother took over in 2020 after my father passed. The payments were relatively small so they never worried about trying to track down the other rights holders about sharing the payments.
Fast forward to now, we have a lease are starting to receive small royalty payments, as are other heirs that we are aware of. In 2022 we discovered someone had paid the taxes online, but could not get any information on who it was. Then this year when my mother did not receive the tax tickets she called and found that someone had changed the name and address on the tax tickets and had already paid the taxes. We have managed to start a dialog with that person and it does appear they are one of the heirs. However, when looking at leases on the Doddridge county website, there is not one in that person’s name.
The questions we have are:
How do we go about finding out who all of the legitimate rights holder are for these leases? We assume Antero would have had to do that, so is it as easy as asking them for it? We do plan go call them next week.
How do we determine if at some point one or more of the heirs sold their rights?
What is the best way to start a dialog with all of the owners to set something up to share the taxes? We are not worried about being compensated for past taxes. But, we assume the taxes are going to increase going forward so think it would be prudent set something up now.
I am very new to this so any advice is appreciated.
You have to start a family tree starting at the time your family first got ownership to the land and minerals. Most likely they got 100 % of both back then. I’ve seen this many times over the year’s. As time goes by the title becomes more fractured if something is not done to describe the heirs. I had a landman tell me about 15 or so year’s ago that there was a very large tract that had over 350 heirs and they still had not been able to determine the title. Most of the time family members try to claim title to more than they have a right to. They don’t know the family tree, they lie, they file false documents, it goes on and on. In my opinion the name on the title should have not been changed until that was cleared up.
Antero will not tell you who all the owners of the mineral rights are. Their usual line is that they paid a lot for that research and they’re not going to give it away for free. Additionally, they have to be careful about privacy. When I was a landman, I found family members that had fallen out of touch. If one requested to be put back in touch I would make sure to contact the other one first and discuss it with them. If both agreed to get back in touch I would give them each other’s contact info. If not, I wouldn’t. You never know who might be a crazy wack job.
If you really do want to find all the other heirs it’s going to take a lot of work. You’ll need to get on Ancestry.com (most of the landmen use this) and start researching the descendants of your great-great-grandfather. Sometimes this is easy, but not often. You’ll learn a lot, though, and genealogy can get pretty addictive. Once you’ve identified heirs you can look their names up on the county records and see if they’ve signed leases or sold their rights.
The taxes probably will increase, but they may not increase as much as you think. What will be a surprise will be the taxes on production, which will come for the first time two years after production starts. Antero will report to the county, and the county will assess you based off the reported royalties. It’s small, about 2.5%, but it will come as a surprise. As far as working with the other heirs, that won’t be as hard as finding them. Once you’ve found them I’m sure you can work something out. At very least you can request that the county split your interest out from their interests so you get taxed separately. The county will usually require you to get a lawyer to review the title and submit a letter to the county, but you’ll have done most of that work already so it won’t be awfully expensive.
People in Texas cannot legally go into a tax office or district and get the title to the land changed without legal documents. I’ve had to deal with this in the past.