I received a lease from Antero for property located on the waters Wheelers Run, Centerville, Tyler Co… There is 121.75000 acres. It belonged to C. I. Powell, my Fathers Grand father. They are offering $250.00 bonus & 15% (3/20th). Reading this forum there are mentions of being paid for acres. this isn’t mentioned in the lease. I am just confused. They waned a response to the lease 10 days after I received it & it has been longer than that. Someone told me if I don’t sign it they can just take it.
Whoaaa! I am very aware of Antero’s tactics. Lol. What kind of talks did you have with Antero agents before they sent the lease? They usually talk before they send out anything. Is this a new lease? If so, that bonus is way too low and so isn’t the royalty. Sounds like you have a pushy agent who wants to rush you into a bad deal. Bonus is paid on each acre. They can file a partition suit if you don’t try to negotiate with them but, that mostly happens when negotiations break down. If you could start from the beginning and don’t leave out any details, we can give you more info.
Hi Joyce, do you know more than that about your relatives, from that great grandfather? He may have had a lot of children, and those children may have had many children. Did your father have brothers and sisters? Know anything about his father or mother (the one who was related to M. Powell)? If they are right, and you have a small percentage, then your bargaining powers are smaller, too.
However, it is always a good idea to ask for more than they offer, and to ask for indemnification and no warranty of title. I am not a lawyer, but my attorney Kyle Nuttall who writes on this forum regularly has often said those are important and easy things to get. Look for some things he has written for his advice. Always best to have an attorney look over a legal document for you. He has had many dealings with Antero so knows what they are likely to agree to.
I think somewhere I have written about how to get the online documents for Tyler, going back to the beginning. It might be interesting for you to search it out. If you can’t find it I’ll find the link.
DT is right about the partition suit, and has some experience with them, but if you are negotiating you probably won’t have to worry.
Read as much as you can on this forum. Knowledge is power. And please ask if you have more questions.
Thank you DT & Nancy for your help. I have been reading this forum for info for about a month & it has been very helpful. I did try to pull up uslandrecords.com & http://tylercountywv.com/ but the sites kept sending me to other sites. All of my Fathers siblings died over 20 yrs. ago & their children have also passed. My Grandmother didn’t have any siblings. The lady who called from GA said she was going to stop trying to trace the family because she had come to a dead end. I didn’t know if grand kids were entitled to a share or not. I will try to find other sites to investigate this. You could be right, maybe their offer is good & there are a lot of heirs. Do u know if one of my siblings signs a lease with Antero for the amounts I’ve given that we all have to accept it? Thank you so much for all your help. My siblings live in OR, VA & CA. It’s very difficult to get info. I don’t think they even care about it. I live in WV & I want to find out what I can. Thanks again for all your help it is greatly appreciated.
I think Nancy is the best friend to all the mineral owners who need help. Nancy, thank you.
Around 6/1/15 I received a call from someone in Georgia who was tracing the heirs of C. I. Powell for Antero. I received a letter from Antero on 6/9/15 with the offer of $250.00 bonus & 15% royalty & the info about property & mineral & oil lease & a request that I call the Deb Tanner with Antero ASAP as the offer is time sensitive . I called her the same day & she said I was 1 of about 600 or 700 heirs to the mineral & oil rights to this property. This can’t be true-the only surviving relatives on my Fathers side are myself & 4 siblings, unless grandchildren & great grandchildren etc are counted. Even then there’s not that many. She insinuated that with all these heirs I wouldn’t receive much. I received the lease on 6/16/15 but I haven’t returned it. I was suspicious of the info she was giving me & I wanted to see the offer in writing, so I told her to go ahead & send me the lease with those figures. Yes, this is a new lease. I understand the royalty of 15% but I don’t know what 3/20th means. The Tax Parcel ID is 1-3-p/o 1,Centerville District, Tyler Co.,Gross acres 121.75 fractional. I haven’t called her back because I don’t know what to say or ask.
Hi Joyce, here is the site Tyler county records. I have heard it works best with Internet Explorer. Attached ( I hope) is the document I received from Tyler county on how to download the software for the old records. Not hard, and I didn 't have to do it quite this way. Main thing is the Right Click Button. If it works, you might need help figuring it out. Two different drop down lists. Please ask if you need help.
Do you know anything about your Father’s siblings and whether there were wills? If really no descendants from them, and no wills, your father might have been their heir. Then there would be his parent’s siblings. Was it his father or his mother who was the child of Mr. Powell?
If a will, that is who inherits. If no will, the WV law of intestate succession dictates inheritance of real property, including oil and gas, in WV no matter where the decedent or heirs lived. WV Code intestate succession
Below is the info on the Tyler county documents. Please ask any more questions. I want to send this before I lose it!!
Joyce, Nancy’s post tells where to find who owns what. She is very good with records. You asked if one signs will you be expected to accept that lease? The answer is no. Every heir will have to sign a lease. As far as other relatives, very few stick together with negotiating. Some see fast cash and some sign not even knowing what they signed or how they got the minerals. The company likes those easy ones and that’s what they were hoping to get when they contacted you. That’s where folks get burnt because they feel pressured to sign. The company will give you deadlines or last offers or any tactic to make you feel “guilty” for holding up the process. The fact is: This is your property and Antero wants to lease it. Do you know if there was an older lease that could obtained for reference? Do you know who is paying the taxes on this property? If there was an old lease before and royalty was paid, that company, if still in business, may be able to give insight on how many were heirs. It is not your “job” to find out who owns what but Antero’s. The trend nowadays is, where the company wants everyone to do their work for them. Me… I would not get in too big a hurry until I find out what you own and how much it is worth to them. If you own one acre and they want to lease it, then they pay you bonus on that one acre. Say…2000.00 an acre which would put a check for 2000.00 in your pocket. The royalty percentage and language is most important and things need to be added and taken out of the company lease. As far as who is an heir, it can be a cousin an uncle a stepchild and so on. If you look at a family tree and at the top was your grandpa who owned the mineral rights you can go from there. Nancy talked about the will being very important and researching is very important.
Thanks for the thanks, all! I have been lucky to have learned a lot, sometimes the hard way! Joyce, the printing will come from Tyler County. I heard last week that it will be about a month or less when their computer guys get it set up so people can use a credit card to download and print. Meanwhile you can send them a letter and check, and get your documents copied and sent. I am going to wait for the one I need, but if you want yours sooner, you pay $1.50/ for the first two pages then $1 a page. Since you can view, you know how many pages. Have you tried looking in the indexes for your ancestors? Indexes are slightly tricky, please ask if you want pointers. Nancy
Joyce, making sure you have the software for Tyler older documents “Web Book and Page Application” on your computer desktop? If so, look at the upper left side, dropdown menu. Should say CENTERVILLE DISTRICT. Go down that list to GRANTEE INDEX TO DEEDS
The dropdown below that, to the left, looks blank. Look through that, it is the letters of the alphabet. Find your letter, such as P which shows up as P-Q. Then the dropdown list to the direct right of that, if you look at 0 it shows the earlier part of the listing for P names. To find the later listings, go to the next page, or 0-0001. You will find Pot-Poz, PP PQ 29
Below that are specific names in this range, Potts 97 and Powell 99
If you want to find Powell as grantee (the person being deeded something) choose 99 from the dropdown from that tab, the one you were on page 0-0001. This starts in 1850. For other names, I have seen deeds as far back as 1815, maybe earlier. Anyway you now see that all the grantees on this page are to Powell last names. There are 3 columns next to it, dividing the forenames into 3 divisions by alphabet. Look there for the forename(s) of the name you are interested in. The next column is the grantor, the one granting in the deed indexed. The next columns shows the book and page numbers of where this is recorded, then a brief description, usually the acreage, district, watershed area, etc. When you have found what you want here, go to the middle area dropdown list, starting with ADMINISTRATOR BOND
Go down to DEED BOOK and select book and page. I think maybe you have already done that for the deed you had reference to.
For the GRANTOR index, the same plan. I think the names are on the same page number for Grantor and Grantee indexes, but it doesn’t hurt to check.
There are also indexes for wills, which work somewhat less easily (all one letter together) deeds of trust, etc.
See if you can get that to work. Somewhat of a slow process but a lot easier than driving to the courthouse and looking in the books. You would still have to go to the grantor and grantee indexes in the books. The newer records of course are a lot easier to use.
Thank you so much Nancy & DT. What are the indexes? Sorry to be so ignorant about all of this.
Nancy, yes I do have them on my desktop. I managed to pull up the grantee & grantor index to deeds. You’re a genius. Thanks
Finally found the company and talked with someone with information on the active oil well. It is in Tyler County. Has anyone else been a part of the Nancy Allen Farm Gas and Oil lease properties? I never received a packet to sign but other people are receiving checks. What steps should I take and what should I ask for? Bonus for signing, price per acre and percentage? Should they pay extra since they did not contact me?
Nancy, thanks for all the info. So, if taxes are owed Antero wouldn’t inform us, we would just hve to pay them? My lease also states that in the event Antero places the property into a pooled unit I would receive the 15% royalty. Is this common practice?
Joyce, the tax question is: yes Antero would not pay taxes if owed. The owner needs to sort that out.
I think I read that you say there is an old lease on this? or not? Is there a well on this property? You might need to have an attorney talk you through this. You might get better lease terms with an attorney’s help, even if the fee costs all your bonus. See my post below for a name.
You said your siblings are not interested in this. If they really aren’t, maybe they could deed their interests to you?
The smaller the ownership the less bargaining power. However, the companies are required by law to get all the owners of a property leased or to follow a procedure for unfound owners. Easier for them if they get a lease from you.
I am pressed for time now; see if this helps. Please ask again if you need more input.
Hi Joyce, glad it worked for you. I recommend looking at all documents involving your ancestor(s) to see just what is involved, not just with the call you got about this. See if anything was granted to, and not granted away. Learn as much as you can. Some of those documents might be handwritten; take the time to try to decipher them too. Ask if you have questions, one of us might have some more answers.
Oh, another thing to do, time consuming but valuable, is to go through the land books. Arranged by District, such as Centerville, the first thing listed. Then by name of the taxpayer. If more than one person owns something, in the earlier times (and still today sometimes) it is listed with the first one on the deed; that is how the assessor’s office recorded the information from the deeds and wills etc, that the clerk’s office had recorded, to signify a change in ownership. That is what the tax bills were based on. If you and I owned a piece of property and it were listed with my name first, I would get the tax bill, and probably you would pay me your half. You can see how this might work early on, but thirty years later your heirs and my heirs might not remember how it was set up.
Just a bit more of information.
Yogie, If it was determined you are an heir to this mineral property and a well was drilled, you will be entitled to be part of it. I would say you need to get all of your paper and research material and documents together and get legal assistance. I have seen instances on some of the posts where this type of thing has happened. These companies have had to pay people they did not include in the leasing. You should get a lease and money just like the rest. Do not let them brush you off and try to appease you with company talk.
Yogie, DT has good advice about legal help. It is possible that the landman who did the research was in a hurry (sometimes they are) and didn’t think things through or research enough before acting. Not having all the facts and not being a lawyer, I can say that I have seen instances where widows signed leases, along with their children. Presumably when you sign a lease you get a bonus.
If you go down below and see what I wrote for Joyce Nunley about the Tyler county records, you might be able to do some research in these names and find out some information. I did a quick research on the grantor index for Allen and found a few with Nancy Allen’s name, the most recent being 1900. I did not search the other names, nor the grantor index or will, fiduciary etc. Just a start. If you do this and have trouble please ask, not completely straightforward.
Here is the link to the more recent records for Tyler. I know the wills are in the old system through 2012, but I think the deeds in the new system start before that. Anyway see what you can find. If you need an attorney I can recommend one, Kyle Nuttall who is a member of this forum. I am sure there are others but I know he knows WV law, and oil and gas.
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Joyce, if you go to the new Tyler deeds site, and put in Antero under business, and select the dates to be 07/07/2015 to 07/31/2015 you will find a number of leases that appear to be on the tract you mentioned. For documents filed after 7/15/15 they are indexed but not viewable, this may have to do with batches of data. Just for your information.
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Nancy, I pulled up the leases & there are a number of them already signed. I took your advice & called Kyle Nuttall. I feel so much better. He answered a number of my questions & bottom line is I probably own a small percentage. He also told me what questions to ask when & if I can ever reach someone at Antero. Thanks again for all your help.