I recently found out through family that a lease has been opened on land that my brother and I have mineral deeds to. I have on hand 3 different deeds all within the same area. The only problem is they were passed down to my brother and I after the family members who owned them passed. So my questions are what do I need to do to find out if a lease is actually opened and also how much mineral rights my brother and I actually own. The total on the deeds come out to 400 acres between the 3.
Have the probates been filed on the acreage as they were passed down? Critical for that to happen so the land folks can find you.
Yes, there are pending Case filings in Sec 5 by King Energy LLC. KING ENERGY L L C 7025 N. ROBINSON OKLAHOMA CITY, OK 73116. The contact for the filings is Eric Huddleston 405-232-3722. You may need to contact them to see if they have your proper addresses and phone numbers and see if you need to cure any title situation. You may have the deeds, but they cannot lease you unless they can find you. In lieu of leasing, they will lease as many as they can find, and then move to forced pooling.
Do this quickly. I see your names on the pooling notices, but they have no address for you. Once the pooling orders come out, you only have 20 days in which to answer or they will assign you the least favorable bonus/royalty pair.
Unfortunately they haven’t been filed as they were passed down. We were minors when we had first seen they had plugged and abandoned these wells and I was never informed on how to have these transferred over into my brothers and my name.
That can be fixed. Get to King Energy quickly and give them your contact information. If there is a will, it will have to be probated. Some of the lawyers on the forum can help you get started on that process.
I was able to get ahold of a Randy Moore from King energy. I gave him the addresses for my brother and I. He said he was going to send us paperwork to fill out and he needed a death certificate of my father to be able to get this started. Is the paperwork pretty straight forward or should I seek some help with it ?
It is fairly easy to get leased with a death certificate and affidavit of heirship, but it is more difficult to get into pay status without actually filing the will. If King is satisfied right now, then you can use the money from the lease bonus to pay for probating the will. Different companies have different requirements for the strength of title for their Division Order analyst. The leasing title opinion is not as rigorous as the Division Order title opinion. The leasing money is small compared to the royalty payout, so the title opinion for the royalty payout is likely to have more requirements.
Sometimes multiple estates need be be probated. In Oklahoma they can often be combined into one case which helps save money. Get the division order analyst title requirements and visit with an attorney. Often these can be done for a flat fee. Richard Winblad