I recently learned that my grandfather, who died in 1962, owned a substantial amount of mineral rights in Shelby county Texas at the time of his death, the family left the area years before he died, I learned an uncle, my fathers brother, has been receiving royalty checks from one or more of these properties, my father died in 1975, the uncle will not divulge any information on the subject other than saying the royalties were supposed to go to my fathers heirs, and “they” should’ve contacted me, I’m assuming “they” are the oil company, should I pursue this, would it be of any value to me or my family ?
You can hire a landman or oil and gas attorney to do a mineral title search and get a legal description for what your grandfather owned. Then you can go to the Texas Railroad Commission GIS map and see what oil company is producing oil on that land. Then you can contact the oil company to see what they need in order to begin paying you royalties. If you do not have a deed for the property from your grandfather or father, in most cases you will need to have an attorney either prepare deeds (if your grandfather and father and mother had wills that were probated and the executors are still alive), or an affidavit of heirship, so there is a documented chain of title for your ownership and file these in the Shelby County Deed records. Then you can send the file-marked deeds or affidavit of heirship and a W-9 to the oil company and request they begin paying you royalties.
To start the process, you can use one of the on-line services to search the county deed records and look for your grandfather’s probate which may list his properties and the distribution to his heirs. Also look for leases that are filed in your uncle’s name which will have legal descriptions. And maybe some in your father’s name. If probate was not filed for your grandfather, the maybe your uncle filed an affidavit of heirship stating who the heirs were. Also, look at the Shelby County appraisal district for your uncle’s name to see wells and any surface on which he is being taxed.
I can almost guarantee there was no will and these mineral deeds were long forgotten, I believe it wasn’t until recently, within the last five years or so that someone contacted my uncle so I’m really not sure what is going on.
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