Mineral Rights

[Mooseherder]

Local story on news tonight had a story of some home owners in the Village of Wellington who received notice from a Mineral and Timber company out of Louisiana about  them not owning the minerals under their homes and offering (Form letter) to sell the rights so the homeowners could avoid cloudy issues if they ever went to sell. Sounds like extortion to me. After all, there were no cloudy issues when they purchased or re-financed.  If this is possible, how does this happen?  Who sold the Mineral Rights?  The State or previous developers?

[getoverit]

I'm somewhat of an expert on this subject as our family farm was under this burden for a while.

During the depression, several companies here in florida went to local farmers and landowners throughout the state and offered them $1 per acre for the rights to the minerals on their property. While this was sold as an oil drilling proposition, it included ALL of the minerals in and under the land. The farmers were told that in the event oil was struck on their land, they would be paid a percentage of the profits for it on top of the $1/acre they were paid at signing.

Now $1/acre was a LOT of money to a lot of these farmers with large families and no way to feed them, and helped them get through the depression era. When My parents bought the farm in the mid 1960's, there was a mineral rights clause in the deed. They bought the property anyway, and spent a ton of time and money getting it removed. It actually took over 20 years to do so and several lawyers and my parents had to "purchase" the mineral rights back from the company that now held the claim (the company had changed hands several times through the years).

It is not an easy thing to get this removed from your property, and in most cases it would never be an issue, but the threat is always there. strip mining is rather common here in Florida, and there is an operational strip mine just a few miles from my home right now. I'm not sure of the minerals they strip from the land, but I can tell you that it is rather difficult to get ANYTHING to grow on the land when they are finished with their strip mining. remember, these companies hold the rights to ALL minerals and can come in at any time and strip the land.

The bottom line is that it takes attorneys to get this removed from your property. If you need a contact name and number of the attorney that handled our mineral rights removal, PM me and I'll see if I can run it down for you.

[Mr Mom]

     Dont forget that alot of company will not give up the rights even if you take them to court.
     

     Thanks Alot Mr Mom

[Mooseherder]

Thanks for the info getoverit.  We didn't receive a letter.  Checked our Deed, Title  and paperwork and there isn't any mention of Mineral rights in any document. I would contact you if someone we know receives this notice though. If there is a hidden clause somewhere, they may want to charge me for moving some of their minerals around when I put a sprinkler system in.

We have been depositing our own minerals through the septic system for many years.
They can have it if they want. ;D

[Faron]

There are instances where a landowner sells a piece of property, but retains the mineral rights, eitrher due to having a productive gas or oil well, or just hoping someone will want to mine coal sometime.  That would be a deal ,breaker for me as I would either own all or none.  I understand a young guy in my area was pretty ticked after a gas well was drilled next to his property.  He bought  the land without mineral rights, and the previous owner leased the gas rights. It didn't seem very important when he bought, but if they ever start pumping, he'll have to pass the well every day, knowing the royalties are going to someone else.  :

[Texas Ranger]

Was a title policy/search run before the purchase?  Here in gas and oil land there is a title policy run on any sale to know exactly what, where and how you are buying the land.  A lot of suprised come to the surface, but better before the sale than some years down the road.

[WH_Conley]

I learned a long time ago to not buy property without a title search. Long story made short. Man owned land, mortgaged it, sold to son, deed made, bank still had lien, man kept the interest paid, son sold it to me, had a special deal going to stay home off construction. I had a title search done and the attorney found the lien. Attorney advised me that the bank could take my property if man # 1 did not pay the loan. I told the son that if he wanted to keep it, fine. He said no, paid off loan, made me a clear deed. He had no property or money either. Course he did not have a title search done,it was his father. I know it was not a scam, I am very close to the whole family. Here in Ky. a title search will state that is done without benefit of a survey, so lines are not addressed, just the paper trail. The title search also showed oil shale leases that expired about 20 years earlier.