# How to lookup mineral rights owned by a person when you don't know where the property is located?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-lookup-mineral-rights-owned-by-a-person-when-you-dont-know-where-the-property-is-located/981177>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 14, 2023, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-lookup-mineral-rights-owned-by-a-person-when-you-dont-know-where-the-property-is-located/981177 "2023-03-14T16:38:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2023, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-lookup-mineral-rights-owned-by-a-person-when-you-dont-know-where-the-property-is-located/981177/1 "2023-03-14T16:38:33Z")

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(Not everyone is aware, but mineral rights to a piece of property are often separate from the property itself. Although you may own the land, you don’t necessarily own the rights to the minerals under that land. Those mineral rights may be owned by someone else entirely from who owns the property. )

If a regular person owns the mineral rights on a piece of random property and they die, how can the heirs find out where those properties are located in order to transfer those rights to an heir? If the heirs already know where the specific property is (e.g. the family farm), then it’s relatively easy. But what if the heirs only know in a general sense that mineral rights were owned but they don’t know the specifics (e.g. the decedent owned mineral rights in some place in Texas but no one knows which specific piece of property)? Normal property can typically be searched in the county tax records to see if anything comes up under the decedent’s name, but it doesn’t seem like mineral rights are handled the same way. Is there a way to search for mineral rights by name rather than by property?

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**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2023, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-lookup-mineral-rights-owned-by-a-person-when-you-dont-know-where-the-property-is-located/981177/2 "2023-03-14T18:08:44Z")

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> **[Texas Land Records and County Records](https://www.texasfile.com)**
>
> Texas Land Records and Deed Records. Search County Clerk records, Real Estate records and Mineral Ownership Data.

Perhaps this site?