Insights & Guides
If you are not sure where to start, pick the path that matches your situation. Each is an ordered reading list.
Start-to-finish reading path for heirs handling newly inherited mineral interests.
What to read before you decide whether an offer on your minerals is fair.
How royalty income intersects with Medicare, ACA, Medicaid, and liquidity decisions in retirement.
Reference posts on mineral interests for elder law attorneys and CPAs advising mineral-owning clients.
Lease terms, Pugh clauses, paying quantities, top leases, cost-free royalty, and mineral reservations in deeds.
A top lease is a new lease signed while an existing lease is still in force, designed to take effect when the existing lease expires. They are common in active leasing markets, frequently misunderstood, and contain a perpetuities trap that can void the lease entirely if the language is wrong.
Read more →A 25% royalty on a lease that allows post-production cost deductions can pay less than a 20% royalty on a true cost-free lease. Royalty fraction gets the headlines, but post-production cost language is often where 10-20% of your check actually disappears.
Read more →The "producing in paying quantities" requirement is the most commonly litigated phrase in Texas oil and gas law. This guide explains the Clifton v. Koontz test, what happens when a marginal well falls short, and what mineral owners can do if a lease should have terminated.
Read more →A Pugh clause prevents an operator from holding more acreage or more depths than they are actually developing. This guide explains the two types — horizontal (area) and vertical (depth) — and why they matter both at lease signing and years later.
Read more →Division orders, reading royalty statements, pricing differentials, post-production costs, drainage, and missing payments.
An oil & gas working interest reported on Schedule K-1 (Form 1065) rather than Schedule E is a different reporting regime: depletion is computed at the partner level, IDC passes through with separate elections, the § 761(a) election can opt the venture out of subchapter K entirely, and self-employment tax exposure differs from a directly held WI. Unlike a mineral or royalty interest — which bears no operating costs — a working interest carries capital and operating expense responsibility, which is what drives the K-1 mechanics. This post is the practitioner workflow.
Read more →IRC § 613A(c) preserves percentage depletion for the small-producer / royalty-owner class even after the 1975 repeal for integrated producers. For most individual mineral-royalty owners, the deduction is 15% of gross royalty income, reduces basis under § 1016(a)(2), and is subject to the 65%-of-taxable-income cap. This post is the practitioner workflow: when the deduction applies, when the limits bind, how it interacts with AMT, and what gets recaptured at sale.
Read more →State unclaimed-property offices hold hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed mineral royalties — owed to owners who moved without notifying operators, heirs who never learned they owned interests, and families who simply lost track.
Read more →WTI hits $80 on the news, but your royalty check shows $68. The gap is not always an underpayment — most of it is the differential between the benchmark and the realized price at your wellhead. Crude grades, pipeline takeaway, and gas hub basis are what actually drive your check.
Read more →Inherited minerals, probate and title, affidavit of heirship, step-up basis, and transfer-on-death deeds.
Most North Dakota mineral heirs live somewhere else — the Bakken boom turned homestead-era minerals into valuable assets held by families two or three generations removed from the state. This guide covers how out-of-state heirs establish ownership, North Dakota's 20-year abandonment statute, getting paid, and the keep-or-sell decision.
Read more →Most Texas mineral inheritances arrive with no paperwork: a parent passes, royalty checks stop or never started, and the family knows only that "there are minerals somewhere." This guide walks an heir through establishing ownership, getting paid, the tax picture, and deciding whether to keep or sell.
Read more →A charitable remainder trust (CRT) is an attractive vehicle for defraying capital-gains tax on appreciated mineral interests — except when the contribution generates unrelated business taxable income. Under IRC § 664(c)(2), a CRT with any UBTI in a year loses its tax-exempt status entirely and is taxed as a complex trust. Working interests routinely produce UBTI; royalty interests generally do not. This post walks through the qualification analysis at intake.
Read more →A conservation easement on land where the minerals have been severed to a third party requires a particular qualification analysis under IRC § 170(h)(5)(B)(i): the probability of surface mining must be "so remote as to be negligible." The Treas. Reg. § 1.170A-14(g)(4) surface-mining prohibition adds a separate gate. With Notice 2017-10 listing syndicated easements and the Hewitt / Oakbrook line of cases tightening the perpetuity standards, the intake workflow for a mineral-affected easement has become unforgiving. This post walks through the qualification analysis.
Read more →How royalty income intersects with Medicare IRMAA, ACA subsidies, Medicaid, Social Security, and retirement tax planning.
Mineral interests rarely come up in intake — they surface when a 1099 arrives, an operator sends a letter, or an estate administration uncovers a royalty stream nobody asked about. For elder law attorneys and CPAs in oil-and-gas states, knowing who the typical mineral owner is (by age, geography, and estate profile) helps turn a reactive scramble into routine practice.
Read more →A retired owner in Florida collecting royalties from Oklahoma and New Mexico owes state income tax to both Oklahoma and New Mexico — even though Florida has no income tax. The rules vary, the withholding is inconsistent, and the paperwork surprises most retirees who inherit multi-state interests.
Read more →Retirement-age owners face a three-way choice: continue collecting royalties and plan to pass minerals to heirs, negotiate leases that extend productive life, or sell for lump-sum liquidity. Each choice has tax, estate, and family implications that point in different directions.
Read more →Roth conversions let retirees shift taxable retirement dollars into tax-free accounts. For mineral owners, variable royalty income makes timing essential — a conversion in the wrong year can cost more in tax than it saves in a lifetime.
Read more →State-by-state guides to probate, forced pooling, dormant minerals, and drilling without a lease.
Ohio is one of the few producing states where inherited mineral rights can genuinely be lost to the surface owner through inaction. The Dormant Mineral Act sets out exactly how that happens — and exactly how heirs can stop it. If your family once owned minerals in eastern Ohio, the time to check is before a notice arrives, not after.
Read more →Mississippi mineral interests — Tuscaloosa Marine Shale royalties along the southwestern fairway, legacy Mississippi Salt Basin oil and gas across the south, and shallow conventional production scattered statewide — pass through estate proceedings under the Mississippi Code (Title 91) in the chancery courts. The defining institutional feature of Mississippi mineral practice is the chancery-court system itself: equity-rooted, county-based, and procedurally distinct from the common-law probate courts found in most other states.
Read more →Arkansas mineral interests — dormant Fayetteville Shale royalties across the Arkoma fairway, legacy Smackover oil and brine in the south, and the contemporary lithium-extraction pivot in the Smackover — pass through probate under Title 28 of the Arkansas Code Annotated. The defining feature of Arkansas mineral practice is the gap between the play’s 2008–2016 Fayetteville heyday and its current low-activity baseline, which routinely surfaces unaddressed succession gaps in inherited interests.
Read more →West Virginia mineral interests — dominantly Marcellus and Utica royalties in the northern panhandle and north-central counties — pass through estate proceedings under Chapters 41 (wills) and 44 (decedents’ estates) of the West Virginia Code. The defining feature of WV mineral practice is the layered nineteenth-century severance history: an estimated 1.3 million distinct mineral interests, many traceable to severances recorded in the 1880s–1910s, generate disproportionate curative volume per estate.
Read more →Adverse possession, mineral vs. surface estates, executive rights, interest types, and surface damages.
A non-executive mineral interest is real mineral ownership with one piece missing: the power to lease. That missing piece — held by someone else, often a relative or a stranger several deeds removed — shapes everything about what the interest pays, what it is worth, and what its owner can do about it.
Read more →A non-participating royalty interest is the most commonly misunderstood interest in oil and gas: its owner shares in production revenue but holds none of the other rights mineral owners take for granted. Understanding exactly what an NPRI includes — and excludes — determines what it is worth and how it can be sold.
Read more →The mineral estate carries several distinct rights, and two of the most important — executive rights and royalty rights — can be separated from one another. Understanding how they differ and what happens when they are severed is essential for anyone who owns, inherits, or is considering selling a mineral interest.
Read more →Mineral interest, royalty interest, non-participating royalty interest, and overriding royalty interest are four different things, taxed differently, paid differently, and worth different amounts on the same well. Owners frequently sell or buy the wrong type because the names sound similar.
Read more →Who buys mineral rights, what moves value, spotting fair offers, and red flags to watch for.
Not all mineral rights offers are created equal. Learn how to evaluate an offer, what questions to ask the buyer, and what red flags should make you walk away.
Read more →A plain-English look at the factors that actually move the price of mineral rights, what to gather before you request an offer, and how to tell a serious buyer from a noisy one.
Read more →Mineral rights values vary dramatically by location, production status, and lease terms. This guide explains the key factors that drive what your minerals are worth.
Read more →If you own mineral rights and are considering a sale, one of the most important decisions you will make is choosing who to sell to. This guide covers the types of buyers in the market and how to evaluate them.
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