What if...

Well, you didn't cite anything when you questioned it - just yourself. So, don't go on about it.

Quote: rxwine

Well, you didn't cite anything when you questioned it - just yourself. So, don't go on about it.

No, I cited several states where I did legal work. I cited what I found and where. You just posted an uncited quote.

Quote: AZDuffman

No, I cited several states where I did legal work. I cited what I found and where. You just posted an uncited quote.

Which I could back up with something besides myself.

Quote: rxwine

Which I could back up with something besides myself.

Right, like I did.

often the wife did not work outside the home. Hard to give her a credit line etc

Quote: odiousgambit

often the wife did not work outside the home. Hard to give her a credit line etc

Quote:

By 1800, the minimum lot was halved to 320 acres, and settlers were allowed to pay in 4 installments, but prices remained fixed at $1.25 an acre until 1854. That year, federal legislation was enacted establishing a graduated scale that adjusted land prices to reflect the desirability of the lot.

If you need a source, google as a direct quote.

Quote: AZDuffman

I notice you do not leave a cite. You also do not know how false this is. I have researched hundreds of chains of title over 3 states* and in all cases women signed the deeds with their husbands and were granted property on the deed with their husbands. They could keep property as a widow and had a dower interest in it, though the inheritance laws protected the kids from her remarrying and a new husband getting it.

I had one case where a single daughter had some kind of mental condition so had to be declared a lunatic so her share in the estate could be sold. I had many cases where sons had to have their wives also sign off on deed when their husband got an inheritance from his father.

It was rare for anyone single to buy property, male of female. I can actually not remember it happening at all.

So, sorry. But your uncited quote does not match up with actual paperwork I have seen and worked with.



*4 if you count WV as VA pre-1861

Were you or are you an attorney? Paralegal? Title researcher for a title insurance company? I ask not to be disrespectful. A close member of my family is a paralegal who excels and specializxes in real estate conveyancing. I just like to know who I am conversing with.

Quote: GenoDRPh

Were you or are you an attorney? Paralegal? Title researcher for a title insurance company? I ask not to be disrespectful. A close member of my family is a paralegal who excels and specializxes in real estate conveyancing. I just like to know who I am conversing with.

The third one. Researched title for oil and gas. Cleared titles for mortgages. Did a mixture of both for about 10 years.

Quote: GenoDRPh

Were you or are you an attorney? Paralegal? Title researcher for a title insurance company? I ask not to be disrespectful. A close member of my family is a paralegal who excels and specializxes in real estate conveyancing. I just like to know who I am conversing with.

It's called abstracting. Literally anyone who can read would be able to do it.

The long and short of what he was doing (at least most of the time) is trying to determine who owned the mineral rights to certain pieces of real estate.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "The owners, right?"

As it turns out, unfortunately not. That would be entirely too easy.

In and around where AZDuffman would have been doing abstracting, people would sell a house and the land, but would sometimes retain the mineral rights to the property. There's a very good chance nobody would have ever noticed, except also in the region, it turns out there are several huge deposits of natural gas. As a result, the mineral rights became relevant.

What makes this even more complicated is the fact that the relevant property sale might have been decades, or perhaps more than a century, in the past. You have to go back through the property records and determine (if the current owner doesn't) who the last owner was to have mineral rights.

Mineral rights, essentially, means that you're selling the property, but you're only selling what's above ground. In the area AZDuffman would be referring to, my guess would have to be many of those people actually thought they were keeping their rights to any coal that might be under there, but it ended up being natural gas. I would suggest that a majority of house sales retained the mineral rights because you pay no taxes on the mineral rights (unless you derive income by way of a contract for the minerals/royalties on actual extraction of resoruces), so there's really no downside.

There definitely wasn't a downside for the abstractors as these natural gas companies paid them extremely well for doing all of this.

For previous owners with retained mineral rights, the best case scenario, for the abstractors, is that they're still alive. If they're alive, then it's a matter of finding them and getting them to sign the lease with your company. If they are not still alive, especially if they died a long time ago, things can get very messy as any rights to the minerals will pass on to their descendants...of which there could be many, so now you need to find all of them, determine what share of the minerals they own (if not a direct line) and then get all of them to sign leases with you.

I imagine many of them thought it was some kind of scam! Think about it---you're out in California, or something, then you get a phone call claiming that you own something called, 'Mineral rights,' on a particular piece of land in Ohio (or thereabouts) because it got passed down to you from someone you might have never even heard of!!! I imagine you get better at lowering someone's guard the more you do this.

Anyway, these title abstractors basically are the ones in charge of doing everything I laid out above and probably have a few more things they do. The qualifications for the job are to be literate. You're basically the world's most boring detective.

Yes, abstractors are used in some states, but oddly not all.

Some have moved on and title companies do the work so attorneys need not do it themselves nor must they hire abstractors to do if for them.

I enjoyed real property cases but researching chain of title issues was a time consuming, pretty boring chore on the few occasions I looked into it for a matter.