Do I own the mineral rights to my property?

Alabama Code § 35-4-90

All conveyances of real property, deeds, mortgages, deeds of trust and instruments in the nature of mortgages to secure debts are inoperative and void as to purchasers for a valuable consideration, mortgagees and judgment creditors without notice, unless they have been recorded before the accrual of the right of those purchasers, mortgagees or judgment creditors. Conveyances required by law to be recorded are recorded in the office of the judge of probate, which in Alabama is the county recording office. All deeds, mortgages, deeds of trust, bills of sale, contracts and other documents purporting to convey any right, title, easement or interest in real estate, and all assignments of mortgages and deeds of trust, are admitted to record in the probate judge's office of any county when executed in accordance with law, and their filing for registration constitutes notice of their contents. A memorandum of a lease may be recorded in lieu of the lease itself if it is executed and acknowledged by both sides and names the parties, the term, any option to renew or extend, and the legal description, and as to what it contains a recorded memorandum has the same effect as recording the lease.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 35-4-90, 35-4-50, 35-4-51 and 35-4-51.1. The statute does not label itself, so read what it actually requires: the later claimant must be WITHOUT NOTICE, and the earlier instrument is saved if it was recorded BEFORE that claimant's right accrued. Both conditions are in one sentence, which is the shape this record has been calling race-notice in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming and Utah, as against the notice-only shape in Kansas and Texas. Two practical points for a mineral searcher. The recording office is the office of the JUDGE OF PROBATE, not a county clerk or a county recorder, which matters when you are looking for the right building or the right online index. And the memorandum provision in section 35-4-51.1 means an oil and gas lease affecting the land may appear in the record only as a short memorandum, so a chain that shows no lease may still be subject to one whose terms are not of record. No Alabama opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. WHAT IS NOT READ: the affidavit provisions at sections 35-4-69 to 35-4-71, which govern what a recorded affidavit gives notice of, and any Alabama decision applying section 35-4-90.

AS 40.17.080

From the time a document is recorded in the records of the recording district in which the land is located, the recorded document is constructive notice of its contents to subsequent purchasers and holders of a security interest in the same property or a part of it. A conveyance of real property in the state, other than a lease for a term of less than one year, is void as against a subsequent innocent purchaser in good faith for valuable consideration whose conveyance is first recorded, and an unrecorded conveyance is valid between the parties to it and against one who has actual notice of it. Purchaser here includes the holder of a consensual interest in real property securing payment or performance. A recorded option or agreement to enter into a contract in the future stops being constructive notice six months after recording where it states no expiration date, or thirty days after the stated expiration date where it does.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 40.17.080. This is the race-notice shape, the same as Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming: the later claimant must be innocent and in good faith, must have given value, and must have recorded first. Kansas and Texas ask only about notice, Louisiana asks about neither. Two Alaska details are worth carrying. Recording is effective when the document is accepted for recording, and the recorder must note the date, hour and MINUTE, so priority between two instruments filed the same day is decided on the log rather than argued about. And the six month expiry of a recorded option as constructive notice is a provision this record has not seen elsewhere: an option sitting in the records with no expiration date stops warning anybody after half a year. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Alaska decision applying the section, and the marketable record title question, since no such act was found and none was searched for by name.

A.R.S. s. 33-412, Invalidity of unrecorded instruments as to bona fide purchaser or creditor

Arizona records with the county recorder and runs a notice rule. All bargains, sales and other conveyances of land, whether passing a freehold or a term of years, together with deeds of settlement upon marriage and deeds of trust and mortgages of whatever kind, are void as to creditors and subsequent purchasers for valuable consideration without notice, unless they are acknowledged and recorded in the office of the county recorder as required by law. The statute then states the other half in terms rather than leaving it to inference: an unrecorded instrument is valid and binding as between the parties and their heirs, and as against any subsequent purchaser who had notice of it or who did not give valuable consideration.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at A.R.S. s. 33-412, both subsections, on 2026-08-01. It is a notice statute and not a race one: what defeats the earlier unrecorded conveyance is the later purchaser taking without notice and for value, and the statute does not require them to record first. Subsection (B) is worth reading beside it because it is the half most recording acts leave implicit, and for a severed mineral interest it is the operative half surprisingly often: an old unrecorded mineral deed still binds the original parties and their heirs, and still binds anybody who took the land knowing about it.

Ark. Code Ann. § 14-15-404, with §§ 14-15-402, 14-15-411 and 14-15-414

Arkansas is a notice jurisdiction and the rule is not where a reader would look for it. Ark. Code 14-15-404 sits in TITLE 14, LOCAL GOVERNMENT, because Arkansas writes its recording law as duties of the county recorder rather than as a doctrine of property, and Title 18, Property, does not contain it. Subsection (a)(1) provides that every deed, bond or instrument of writing affecting the title in law or equity to any real or personal property in the state, which is or may be required by law to be acknowledged or proved and recorded, is constructive notice to all persons FROM THE TIME THE INSTRUMENT IS FILED FOR RECORD in the office of the county recorder of the proper county. Subsection (b) supplies the consequence of not filing: no such instrument made after 21 December 1846 is good or valid against a subsequent purchaser of the real estate for a valuable consideration WITHOUT ACTUAL NOTICE of it, nor against a creditor of the person who executed it who obtains a judgment or decree that may be a lien, unless it has been duly executed, acknowledged or proved as required and filed for record in the county where the real estate is situated. That is a notice rule rather than a race or race-notice rule: a later purchaser who knew about the earlier unrecorded deed takes subject to it however quickly they record, and one who genuinely did not know takes free of it. The moment that counts is FILING rather than the recorder getting round to transcribing, and Ark. Code 14-15-411 obliges the recorder to endorse the precise time of filing on the instrument. Two further practical points. Ark. Code 14-15-402(b) sets physical requirements for acceptance, including the paper size, a two and a half inch margin at the top right of the first page for the file mark, the title of the document and the names of grantor and grantee, with instruments executed before 1 January 2004 exempt and the recorder holding a discretion to waive for good cause. And Ark. Code 14-15-414 requires the recorder to keep the indexes, which are what a mineral title search actually runs on.

Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from Ark. Code 14-15-404 on the verbatim mirror, with subchapter 4 of chapter 15 of Title 14 walked end to end through the Previous and Next chain, twenty sections. This section was found only after Title 18 had been walked and shown not to contain a priority rule. It is the third state running on this record where the operative provision is outside the title named for the subject, after Georgia's severance tax in the conservation title and Tennessee's severance tax in the oil and gas title.

Cal. Civ. Code § 1214

Every conveyance of real property or an estate for years in it, other than a lease for a term not exceeding one year, is void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee of the same property or any part of it, in good faith and for a valuable consideration, whose conveyance is first duly recorded, and as against any judgment affecting the title unless the conveyance was duly recorded before the record of notice of action. Every conveyance acknowledged or proved and certified and recorded as prescribed by law is, from the time it is filed with the recorder for record, constructive notice of its contents to subsequent purchasers and mortgagees, and a certified copy of such a recorded conveyance may be recorded in any other county with the same force and effect as the original. Conveyance for these two sections embraces every instrument in writing by which any estate or interest in real property is created, aliened, mortgaged or encumbered, or by which the title to any real property may be affected, except wills.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 1213, 1214 and 1215. This is the race-notice shape, the same as Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska and Wyoming: the later claimant must be in good faith, must have given value, and must have recorded first. Two California specifics are worth carrying. The priority rule reaches JUDGMENTS as well as purchasers, so an unrecorded conveyance also loses to a judgment affecting the title unless it was recorded before the notice of action went on the record, which is a limb this record has not seen stated in the same breath elsewhere. And the definition section matters more here than the usual boilerplate, because it settles that a mineral deed or reservation is a conveyance for these purposes: it embraces every instrument by which any estate or interest in real property is created, aliened, mortgaged or encumbered, or by which title may be affected, and excludes only wills. WHAT IS NOT READ: any California decision applying the sections, and the priority rules for a mineral right specifically as against the general marketable title provisions.

C.R.S. § 38-35-109(1)

A deed or reservation affecting Colorado real property is recorded in the office of the county clerk and recorder for the county where the land sits, and an unrecorded instrument loses to a later party who records first without notice of it.

Checked July 29, 2026. Subsection (1) read in full at colorado.public.law, current through Fall 2025, then cross-checked word for word against codes.findlaw.com, which marks its copy current as of January 01, 2025. The same subsection provides that "No such unrecorded instrument or document shall be valid against any person with any kind of rights in or to such real property who first records and those holding rights under such person, except between the parties thereto and against those having notice thereof prior to acquisition of such rights", and then characterises itself: "This is a race-notice recording statute." That sentence was deliberately checked against both mirrors before being treated as statutory text rather than an editor's gloss. It appears inline in subsection (1) in both copies, and two publishers with separate editorial pipelines would not insert the same characterisation at the same point. Instruments conveying real property to the state or a political subdivision are recorded under section 38-35-109.5 instead.

C.G.S. § 47-10, Conveyance to be recorded

No conveyance shall be effectual to hold any land against any other person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, unless recorded on the records of the town in which the land lies. Where a conveyance is executed under a power of attorney, the power must be recorded with the deed unless it is already recorded in that town and the deed refers to it. A conveyance otherwise effective and properly recorded is not invalidated because the original documentation was converted into digital or electronic form or was lost or destroyed after recording. Separately, no lease of any building, land or tenement for life or for a term exceeding one year, or which provides for renewal or an option to purchase, is effectual against anybody other than the lessor and lessee and their heirs, successors, administrators and executors unless it is in writing, executed, attested, acknowledged and recorded in the same manner as a deed; but a notice of lease is sufficient if it carries seven things, being the names and addresses of the parties if set out in the lease, a reference to the lease with its date of execution, the term with its commencement and termination dates, a description of the property, a notation if a right of extension or renewal is exercisable, a notation of the date by which any purchase option must be exercised, and a reference to a place where the lease is on file.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at C.G.S. §§ 47-10 and 47-19 on 2026-08-03. TWO OBSERVATIONS AND THE FIRST IS A PATTERN THIS RECORD HAS NOW SEEN THREE TIMES IN ONE WEEK. Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire all state the recording rule in the same old form: an unrecorded conveyance holds nothing against ANY PERSON but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, which on its face asks nothing about what a later purchaser knew. Vermont's is 27 V.S.A. § 342 and New Hampshire's is RSA 477:7. Massachusetts, the fourth state in the group and read the same day, does not: MGL c. 183 § 4 excepts persons having ACTUAL NOTICE in terms, which makes it a notice statute on its face. So three of four New England states read here use the harder formulation and one does not. THIS RECORD APPLIES NO LABEL OF NOTICE, RACE OR RACE NOTICE TO CONNECTICUT, because doing so would need Connecticut decisions and none was fetched. The annotations printed under § 47-10 on the General Assembly's own page include notes to the effect that a deed first recorded obtains priority and that a bona fide later purchaser without notice of a former unrecorded conveyance holds against the earlier purchaser, and those notes point in different directions from the section's own words. THEY WERE READ AS ANNOTATIONS ON A STATUTE PAGE AND THE OPINIONS THEMSELVES WERE NOT FETCHED, so this page does not rely on them and does not resolve the question. SECOND, THE OFFICE IS THE TOWN. Connecticut abolished county government in 1960 and the land records are kept by the town clerk of the town in which the land lies, so a Connecticut title search runs town by town. That is the same answer Vermont gives and the opposite of New Hampshire's, which records in county registries of deeds. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Connecticut decision, whether possession gives inquiry notice, and whether any town keeps a separate index for mineral instruments.

25 Del. C. § 153, Priority of deed concerning lands or tenements

A deed concerning lands or tenements shall have priority from the time that it is recorded in the proper office, without respect to the time that it was signed, sealed and delivered. A deed or letter of attorney concerning lands, acknowledged or proved and certified, is recorded in the recorder's office for the county where the lands lie, together with the certificate and all indorsements and annexations, when lodged there at any time after sealing and delivery, and the record or an office copy of it is sufficient evidence. Recording in one county has effect only in respect of the lands mentioned in the instrument that are situate in that county. Deeds and letters of attorney may be recorded at any time. And apart from the private examination of a married woman, which remains valid though the deed is unrecorded, no acknowledgment or proof however duly certified makes a deed or letter of attorney evidence without its being duly recorded.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 25 Del. C. §§ 151, 152, 153, 154 and 155 on 2026-08-03. THIS IS THE FLATTEST RECORDING RULE ON THIS RECORD AND IT IS WORTH SEEING WHAT IT LEAVES OUT. Section 153 has one operative idea: priority runs from recording. It does not ask whether the later purchaser paid value. It does not ask whether they acted in good faith. It does not ask what they knew. Every other formulation read this week asks at least one of those. Massachusetts and Rhode Island except a person with ACTUAL NOTICE. Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire say an unrecorded conveyance holds nothing against any person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, which is silent on knowledge but is a rule about who is bound rather than about who ranks first. Delaware states a pure ordering rule. THIS RECORD STILL APPLIES NO LABEL TO DELAWARE, and the restraint matters more here than usual precisely because the section reads so cleanly: a first-to-record rule with no good faith requirement is unusual enough that a court's gloss on it would be the interesting part, and no Delaware decision was fetched. The page states the text and stops. SECTION 152 IS THE PRACTICAL ONE FOR A SEARCHER and it is easy to skim past: recording in one county has effect ONLY as to the land in that county, stated expressly rather than left to inference. Delaware has three counties and a parcel straddling a line has to be recorded in both. THE NEGATIVE BEHIND ALL OF THIS: chapters 1 and 3 of title 25 were read end to end, 33,501 characters, and MINERAL, MINING, QUARRY, COAL, OIL, GAS, SEVER, SUBSURFACE, DORMANT and MARKETABLE appear in none of them, against DEED 23 and RECORD 10. WHAT IS NOT READ: title 9 chapter 96, Recorders, so whether any Delaware recorder keeps a separate index for mineral instruments is not established; and any Delaware decision on § 153.

Fla. Stat. s. 695.01, Conveyances and liens to be recorded

No conveyance, transfer or mortgage of real property or of any interest in it, and no lease for a year or longer, is good in law or equity against creditors or subsequent purchasers for a valuable consideration and without notice, unless it is recorded according to law. That is a notice rule rather than a race one: the later purchaser prevails by having taken without notice, and the statute does not make them record first. Florida then adds a second sentence that decides a question other states answer the other way. Grantees by quitclaim, whenever made, are deemed and held to be bona fide purchasers without notice within the meaning of the recording acts.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Fla. Stat. s. 695.01 on 2026-08-01, all three subsections. Subsection (2) is the direct opposite of Minnesota, whose priority rule is on this record as a quitclaim not being a warning; there, taking by a deed that warrants nothing is itself a reason to look harder. Florida legislates the reverse. That matters to a severed mineral interest because a quitclaim is exactly how an interest of doubtful provenance tends to move, and in Florida the person who took it is not put on inquiry by the form of their own deed. Subsection (3) requires a governmental lien for an improvement, service, fine or penalty to be recorded with the owner's name and the parcel identification number to bind creditors or later purchasers.

O.C.G.A. § 44-2-1

Georgia deeds are recorded with the clerk of the superior court of the county where the land is located, and a deed may be recorded at any time. What a delay costs is priority. Under O.C.G.A. 44-2-1 a prior unrecorded deed loses its priority over a subsequent recorded deed from the same vendor when the later purchaser takes without notice of the earlier deed, which is the race notice rule: the later buyer needs both the recording and the absence of notice, so a buyer who knew about the earlier deed gains nothing by winning the race to the courthouse. O.C.G.A. 44-2-2(b) states the same idea from the other end for deeds, mortgages and liens of all kinds that the law requires to be recorded, providing that as against third parties who have acquired a transfer or lien on the same property in good faith and without notice, they take effect ONLY from the time they are filed for record. Filing, not execution and not delivery, is the moment that counts against a stranger to the deed. A separate rule at 44-2-3 handles gifts: an unrecorded VOLUNTARY deed or conveyance is void against a subsequent bona fide purchaser for value without notice, and recording it restores its priority.

Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from the verbatim mirror: 44-2-1 in full, 44-2-2 in full including the priority provision at subsection (b), and 44-2-3 in full. The clerk of the superior court is also required by 44-2-2 to offer electronic filing for all of the instruments listed, and to maintain a public computer terminal, so the county office is the point of search as well as the point of filing.

HRS s. 502-83, Effect of not recording deeds, leases, etc.

All deeds, leases for a term of more than one year, mortgages of any interest in real estate and other conveyances of real estate in Hawaii must be recorded in the Bureau of Conveyances. There are no county recording offices. A conveyance not so recorded is void as against any subsequent purchaser, lessee or mortgagee in good faith and for a valuable consideration, not having actual notice of the conveyance of the same real estate or any interest in it, whose own conveyance is first duly recorded. Timing is by delivery: every instrument entitled to be recorded is recorded in the order and as of the time it is delivered to the registrar, and is considered recorded from that delivery. The registrar may not accept an instrument on a Sunday, a legal holiday or a closed Saturday, or on any other day except between eight in the morning and half past three in the afternoon, and may agree in writing with a person or association that an instrument be recorded at one minute past eight on a day after its delivery.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at HRS ss. 502-83 and 502-32 on 2026-08-02, and at the Bureau of Conveyances' own page the same day. Both limbs are required, so this is race-notice: a later buyer must be in good faith, for value, without ACTUAL notice, AND first to record. The section's own case notes record that actual possession under an unrecorded deed is constructive notice defeating good faith, and that a later purchaser is not protected though in good faith unless the purchaser records first. The office is the thing most likely to waste a searcher's morning. The Bureau of Conveyances is a division of the Department of Land and Natural Resources and it serves the whole State; its page states it examines, records, indexes and digitises over 344,000 Regular System and Land Court documents and maps annually and issues Land Court certificates of title, and it claims Hawaii is one of two states in the nation with a single statewide recording system, which is the Bureau's claim rather than this record's finding. Alaska is the other state on this record without county recording, and its records sit with its own Department of Natural Resources. WHAT IS NOT READ: how the Bureau's indices are actually searched, and how far back the Regular System index reaches.

Idaho Code s. 55-812, Unrecorded conveyance void against subsequent purchasers

Every conveyance of real property other than a lease for a term not exceeding one year is void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee of the same property, or any part of it, in good faith and for a valuable consideration, whose conveyance is first duly recorded. Both limbs are in the one sentence: the later claimant must be in good faith and must have given value, and must also have got to the recorder first. The section is territorial law of 1863 and has not been amended since the 1932 code. What may be recorded is set out separately and includes, alongside conveyances and judgments, United States patents and notices of location, which is where the paper trail of an Idaho mining claim begins in the county records.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Idaho Code 55-812 on 2026-08-03, with 55-801 to 55-804 on what may be recorded. Both limbs are required, which is the shape this record has been calling race-notice in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming, Utah, Minnesota, Hawaii and Oregon, as against the notice-only shape in Kansas and Texas. No Idaho opinion classifying the state was fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. Set it against North Carolina, which is on this record as pure race, where the first to register wins and notice does not come into it at all. The one year lease exclusion matters more for minerals than it looks: a short oil and gas lease is outside the section, though in practice an oil and gas lease with a habendum clause is not a lease for a term not exceeding one year. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Idaho decision on what good faith requires, and in particular whether possession or inquiry notice defeats it.

765 ILCS 5/30

All deeds, mortgages and other instruments of writing authorised to be recorded take effect and are in force from and after the time of filing them for record, and not before, as to all creditors and subsequent purchasers without notice, and all such deeds and title papers are adjudged void as to those creditors and subsequent purchasers until they are filed for record. Deeds, mortgages and other instruments relating to real estate are deemed, from the time of filing for record, notice to subsequent purchasers and creditors even though not acknowledged or proven according to law, though such an instrument is not to be read in evidence unless its execution is proved.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 30 and 31 of the Conveyances Act, both of which have stood since the session laws of 1871 and 1872 and are quoted here in their original words. The pairing is the interesting part and it is the reverse of Kentucky's. Kentucky treats an unacknowledged instrument as not validly lodged at all; Illinois says in terms that an unacknowledged instrument, once filed, is still notice to subsequent purchasers and creditors, and only limits what can be done with it as evidence. So in Illinois the recording does its work even where the formalities failed. No Illinois opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so this record applies no label. WHAT IS NOT READ: the Uniform Real Property Electronic Recording Act at 765 ILCS 33, and the indexing provisions.

Ind. Code § 32-21-4-1

An Indiana conveyance or mortgage must be recorded in the recorder's office in the county where the land is located, and takes priority according to the time of its recording. A conveyance or mortgage is fraudulent and void as against a subsequent purchaser, lessee or mortgagee in good faith and for valuable consideration whose own deed, mortgage or lease is recorded first. Conveyance is defined to include a lease or memorandum of lease for a term exceeding three years.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at IC 32-21-4-1(b) and (c) in the 2025 Indiana Code. This is a tenth distinct formulation across the states on this record and it combines two things other states keep apart: it states a general priority rule by time of recording, and then states the fraudulent-and-void consequence in the terms Ohio and Pennsylvania use, qualified by good faith and value in the terms Michigan, North Dakota and Montana use. The definition in subsection (a) is worth noting for a mineral owner because it expressly brings in a lease, or a memorandum of lease, for a term exceeding three years, which is the ordinary shape of an oil and gas lease. No Indiana opinion classifying the state as notice or race-notice has been fetched, so no label is applied here. Subsection (d), which deals with instruments recorded despite defects in acknowledgment or technical form, was seen and not read.

Iowa Code s. 558.41, Recording

Iowa records with the county recorder and runs a notice rule. An instrument affecting real estate is of no validity against subsequent purchasers for a valuable consideration, without notice, unless it is filed and recorded in the county where the real estate is located. The same section extends that to the state and its political subdivisions during and after condemnation proceedings against the real estate. So what defeats an earlier unrecorded conveyance is a later purchase for value made without notice of it, and the statute does not ask who recorded first.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Iowa Code s. 558.41(1) and (2) on 2026-08-01. The condemnation limb is unusual and worth noticing for a mineral owner, because it puts the state in the same position as a purchaser without notice during and after proceedings against the land. Subsection (2) deals with priority against liens given equal precedence with ordinary taxes under chapters 260E and 260F, and expressly preserves unpaid property tax liens under chapter 445, which connects to the separate assessment of mineral interests above. The indexing sections the dormancy chapter cross-refers to, ss. 558.49 and 558.52, were not read.

K.S.A. § 58-2223

No instrument in writing of the kind the chapter provides for is valid, except between the parties to it and those who have actual notice of it, until it is deposited with the register of deeds for record. Every such instrument, certified and recorded in the prescribed manner, imparts notice to all persons of its contents from the time of filing with the register of deeds, and all subsequent purchasers and mortgagees are deemed to purchase with notice.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 58-2223 and 58-2222, both of which have stood in these words since the General Statutes of 1868. The pair states the two halves of a pure notice rule about as plainly as any provision on this record: an unrecorded instrument is good against anybody who actually knew about it, and a recorded one is good against everybody. What is absent is the element several other states here add. Nebraska requires the later claimant to be both without notice and first to record, Colorado is race-notice, and Louisiana asks nothing about notice at all. Kansas asks only whether the later claimant actually knew. No Kansas opinion classifying the state has been fetched, so this record applies no label of its own, though the revisor prints a substantial list of law review references under section 58-2222 for anyone who wants to go further. WHAT IS NOT READ: the marketable record title act Kansas has, which the revisor's references under 58-2222 name, and the indexing provisions.

Ky. Rev. Stat. § 382.270

A Kentucky deed, deed of trust or mortgage conveying legal or equitable title to real property is not validly lodged for record, and so not valid against a purchaser for valuable consideration without notice of it or against creditors, until it is acknowledged or proved according to law. Since a 2022 amendment, an instrument that was not acknowledged but has otherwise been lodged for record is nevertheless treated as validly lodged, and all interested parties are on constructive notice of its contents.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read as the per-section PDF the Kentucky General Assembly publishes, extracted with pdftotext. The section states its own currency: effective July 14, 2022, amended by 2022 Ky. Acts ch. 167, sec. 1. This is an eleventh distinct formulation across the states on this record and the axis it turns on is unusual. Most of the others turn on recording; Kentucky turns on ACKNOWLEDGMENT, the formal step of proving the instrument, and treats an unacknowledged instrument as not validly lodged at all. The 2022 amendment then pulls much of the sting: an instrument not acknowledged but otherwise lodged for record is deemed validly lodged for the purposes of the chapter and puts interested parties on constructive notice. Subsection (2) defines creditors broadly, as all creditors whether or not they have acquired a lien by legal or equitable proceedings or by voluntary conveyance. No Kentucky opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so no label is applied.

La. Civ. Code art. 3338

The rights and obligations established or created by certain written instruments are without effect as to a third person unless the instrument is registered by recording it in the appropriate mortgage or conveyance records. Those instruments are an instrument that transfers an immovable or establishes a real right in or over an immovable; the lease of an immovable; an option, right of first refusal, or contract to buy, sell or lease an immovable or to establish a real right in or over one; and an instrument that modifies, terminates or transfers the rights created or evidenced by any of them. Recordation does not create a presumption that the instrument is valid or genuine, or as to the capacity or status of the parties, has no effect unless the law expressly provides for its recordation, and is effective only for immovables located in the parish where it is recorded. A party to a recorded instrument may not contradict its terms or its statements of fact to the prejudice of a third person who acquires an interest after it is recorded.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at articles 3338, 3341 and 3342 of the Civil Code, in the Title headed Of Registry. This is the plainest recording rule on the record and the one that differs most from the others. Colorado is race-notice, Texas is notice, Nebraska requires the later claimant to be without notice and to have recorded first, Kentucky turns on acknowledgment. Every one of those makes what somebody knew part of the question. Louisiana does not: the instrument is simply without effect as to a third person until it is recorded, and the article says nothing about notice or good faith. A mineral servitude is a real right in an immovable, so it is squarely inside the list. Note the parish limit in article 3341, which matters for a servitude under land straddling a parish line, and note that article 3343, which defined a third person, was repealed by Acts 2025, No. 488, so this record does not state the definition. WHAT IS NOT READ: where that definition now lives, and the remaining articles of the Title, including the effect of recordation on prescription.

33 M.R.S. s. 201, Priority of recording

No conveyance of an estate in fee simple, fee tail or for life, and no lease for more than two years or for an indefinite term, is effectual against any person except the grantor, the grantor's heirs and devisees, and persons having actual notice of it, unless the deed or lease is acknowledged and recorded in the registry of deeds within the county where the land lies. Where the land is in two or more counties the instrument must be recorded in the registry of each of them, and in counties with two or more registry districts it must be recorded in the district legal for that record. A conveyance of the grantor's right, title or interest, if duly recorded, is as effectual against prior unrecorded conveyances as if it purported to convey an actual title. All recorded deeds, leases or other written instruments regarding real estate take precedence over unrecorded attachments and seizures. A memorandum of a lease may be recorded instead of the lease, and if it is, the lease is considered recorded for all purposes; the memorandum must name all the parties, describe the property intelligibly, state the date and term, and describe any renewal, extension, purchase option or transfer of title provisions, but need not describe rent, and recording it is notice of all the terms of the lease including rent, price and default.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 33 M.R.S. s. 201 on 2026-08-03. The test is ACTUAL NOTICE and there is no first to record limb, which is the shape this record has been calling notice-only in Kansas, Texas and Missouri, as against the race notice shape in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming, Utah, Minnesota, Hawaii, Oregon, Idaho, Maryland and South Carolina, and against North Carolina's pure race. No Maine opinion classifying the state was fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. TWO PRACTICAL POINTS FOR A MINERAL SEARCHER, and the second is easy to miss. Recording is required in EVERY county the land lies in, and separately in the right registry district where a county has more than one, so a Maine mineral interest spanning a county line has two places it can fail. And the memorandum of lease rule at the end of the section is the reason a Maine title search may find a one page document where the transaction was a long lease: recording the memorandum is notice of ALL the terms, including rent and default, which are the terms the memorandum is expressly not required to describe. WHAT IS NOT READ: which Maine counties have more than one registry district, any Maine decision on what constitutes actual notice, and whether Maine recognises inquiry notice from possession, which s. 201 does not mention.

Md. Code, Real Property s. 3-203, Effect of recording

Every recorded deed or other instrument takes effect from its effective date as against the grantee of any deed executed and delivered after that effective date, unless the grantee of the subsequent deed has accepted delivery in good faith, without constructive notice under section 3-202, and for a good and valuable consideration, and has recorded the deed first. All four conditions are required of the later grantee, and if any of them fails the earlier instrument prevails from its own effective date rather than from the date it reached the record. Maryland states the rule from the earlier instrument's point of view rather than by declaring an unrecorded conveyance void, which is the drafting most states on this record use, and the practical effect is the same but the burden is arranged differently.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Real Property s. 3-203 on 2026-08-03. Good faith, no constructive notice, value and first to record: that is four limbs where most race notice statutes on this record state three, and the fourth is a cross reference that carries real weight, so read the companion rule on this page for what s. 3-202 does. This record has been calling the combination race notice in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming, Utah, Minnesota, Hawaii, Oregon and Idaho, as against the notice only shape in Kansas and Texas, and North Carolina's pure race where notice does not come into it at all. No Maryland opinion classifying the state was fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. The inversion of the drafting is worth noticing for a mineral owner in particular: a Maryland mineral deed takes effect FROM ITS EFFECTIVE DATE, so the question a searcher asks is not when it was recorded but whether the later purchaser can make out all four conditions. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Maryland decision on the section, and the rest of title 3 of the Real Property Article.

MGL c. 183 § 4, Effect of recordation or actual notice of deeds or leases

For unregistered land, a conveyance of an estate in fee simple, fee tail or for life, or a lease for more than seven years, or an assignment of rents or profits, is not valid as against any person except the grantor or lessor, their heirs and devisees, AND PERSONS HAVING ACTUAL NOTICE OF IT, unless it is recorded in the registry of deeds for the county or district where the land lies. So an unrecorded Massachusetts deed still binds anybody who actually knew about it, and there is no race element in the section: it does not ask who recorded first. A notice of lease containing the date of execution, a description of the demised premises, the term with its commencement and termination dates and all rights of extension or renewal may be recorded instead of a long lease. For REGISTERED land the rule is the opposite in structure. An owner of registered land may convey, mortgage, lease or charge it as fully as if it were not registered and may use the ordinary forms, but no deed, mortgage or other voluntary instrument purporting to convey or affect registered land takes effect as a conveyance or binds the land at all: it operates only as a contract between the parties and as evidence of authority to the recorder to make registration. The act of registration only is the operative act. An interest less than a fee simple is registered by filing the instrument with an assistant recorder and by a brief memorandum on the certificate of title.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at MGL c. 183 § 4 with c. 185 §§ 57 and 59 on 2026-08-03. THE TWO SENTENCES ARE THE WHOLE POINT AND THEY POINT OPPOSITE WAYS, which is why a Massachusetts searcher has to know which system the parcel is in before the search means anything. On unregistered land actual notice defeats the record, so an unrecorded severance can still bind a buyer who knew. On registered land nothing but registration operates at all, so a severed mineral deed that was never registered conveys nothing against the land however much anybody knew about it. There is a third provision that matters more to mineral title than either and it is easy to miss. MGL c. 184 § 25 provides that no INDEFINITE REFERENCE in a recorded instrument subjects a person not an immediate party to any interest in real estate, nor puts them on inquiry, nor clouds their title, and it defines an indefinite reference to include a recital indicating directly or by implication that real estate MAY BE SUBJECT TO restrictions, easements, mortgages, encumbrances or other interests not created by instruments recorded in due course, and any other reference to an interest unless the instrument either creates that interest or specifies the recorded instrument that creates it and where it is recorded. And recorded in due course means indexed in the GRANTOR index under the name of the record owner at the time of recording. So in Massachusetts a deed reciting that the premises are conveyed subject to prior reservations, without saying which or where, puts a later purchaser on notice of nothing. That is the mirror image of Oregon's ORS 93.710, which was written to protect the severed mineral owner who is never in possession; § 25 protects the purchaser instead. WHAT IS NOT READ: c. 36, Registers of Deeds, so whether any registry keeps a separate index for mineral instruments is not established; and no Massachusetts decision on § 25 or on § 4 was fetched.

MCL 565.29

A Michigan conveyance of real estate that is not recorded is void as against a later purchaser in good faith and for valuable consideration whose own conveyance is first duly recorded. That the first recorded conveyance is a quitclaim deed does not by itself affect that purchaser's good faith or put them on notice of an unrecorded conveyance.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the Revised Statutes of 1846 chapter on alienation by deed and the recording of conveyances, as amended in 1915. Worth noting for anyone comparing states: this is close to word for word what North Dakota's recording section says, including the quitclaim sentence, which is a reminder that several of these statutes descend from the same nineteenth century model rather than being independently invented. Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio and New Mexico each word the same rule differently again. No Michigan opinion classifying the state as notice or race-notice has been fetched, so no label is applied here.

Minn. Stat. § 507.34

Every conveyance of real estate must be recorded in the office of the county recorder for the county where the land is, and an unrecorded conveyance is void as against a subsequent purchaser in good faith and for valuable consideration whose own conveyance is first duly recorded, and as against an attachment or a judgment obtained against the person in whose name the record title stands. The statute adds that the first recorded conveyance being in the form of, or containing the terms of, a quitclaim and release does not affect the subsequent purchaser's good faith and is not by itself notice of any unrecorded conveyance.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Minn. Stat. § 507.34. Both limbs are required, good faith and value AND first to record, which is what makes this race-notice rather than pure notice, and it means a Minnesota mineral deed sitting unrecorded in a drawer can be defeated by a later buyer who knew nothing and recorded first. The quitclaim clause is the part worth putting in front of a reader, because it answers a question people actually have about old mineral chains. A quitclaim deed in the chain is often treated as a signal that the grantor was unsure what they owned, and readers ask whether finding one puts a later buyer on inquiry. Minnesota says in terms that it does not: the form of the instrument neither impeaches the subsequent purchaser's good faith nor operates as notice. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Minnesota decision applying the section, and how it interacts with the Torrens system for registered land, which is the separate rule below.

Miss. Code Ann. § 89-5-5, with §§ 89-5-1 and 89-5-3

Mississippi records with the CHANCERY CLERK of the county where the land lies, and three sections of chapter 5 of Title 89 together make it a race notice state. Miss. Code 89-5-1 provides that a conveyance of land is not good against a purchaser for a valuable consideration without notice, or against any creditor, unless it is lodged with the clerk to be recorded; and that AFTER FILING, the priority of time of filing determines the priority of all conveyances of the same land as between the several holders. Miss. Code 89-5-3 puts the same rule from the other end and extends it to deeds of trust and mortgages: such instruments are void as to all creditors and subsequent purchasers for a valuable consideration WITHOUT NOTICE unless acknowledged or proved and lodged with the clerk, failure to file prevents any claim of priority over a similar recorded instrument, and priority is governed by priority in time of filing IN THE ABSENCE OF ACTUAL NOTICE. It then preserves the instrument as between the parties and their heirs, and against subsequent purchasers with notice or without valuable consideration. Miss. Code 89-5-5 supplies the moment: every conveyance, covenant, agreement, bond, mortgage and deed of trust takes effect, as to creditors and subsequent purchasers for value without notice, ONLY FROM THE TIME WHEN DELIVERED TO THE CLERK to be recorded. So the race is real but it is not pure: a later purchaser who had actual notice of the earlier mineral deed does not win it by filing first, and one who did not know takes free of an unrecorded instrument. Two practical points. Miss. Code 89-5-33 requires the clerk to keep a general index, direct and reverse, which is what a mineral title search actually runs on. And Miss. Code 89-5-8 allows an affidavit about identification, marital status or heirship to be recorded, which is the cheap way an inherited mineral interest is tidied up in the record.

Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from Miss. Code 89-5-5, with 89-5-1 and 89-5-3, on the verbatim mirror, chapter walked end to end, thirty-two sections. All three sections open with an exception for the Uniform Real Property Electronic Recording Act at 89-5-101 to 89-5-113, which is in the same chapter and was read: it changes the medium an instrument may be filed in, not the priority rule.

RSMo s. 442.400, Not valid until recorded

No instrument in writing conveying or affecting real estate is valid, except between the parties to it and such as have actual notice of it, until it is deposited with the recorder for record. The complement is stated separately: every such instrument, certified and recorded as prescribed, imparts notice to all persons of its contents from the time of filing with the recorder, and all subsequent purchasers and mortgagees are deemed in law and equity to purchase with notice. So Missouri asks about knowledge rather than about a race to the counter. A later purchaser who actually knew about an earlier unrecorded mineral deed takes subject to it however quickly they record, and a later purchaser who did not know takes free of it whether or not they were first. A third section completes the picture for anybody dealing with a defective chain: where a grantor purports by the terms of the deed to convey an indefeasible estate in fee simple absolute but does not have the legal title at the time and afterwards acquires it, the estate subsequently acquired passes immediately to the grantee, and the conveyance is as effective as though the grantor had held the title all along.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSMo ss. 442.400, 442.390 and 442.430 on 2026-08-03, each RSMo 1939 with prior revisions to 1909. The test is ACTUAL NOTICE and there is no first to record limb, which is the shape this record has been calling notice-only in Kansas and Texas, against the race notice shape in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming, Utah, Minnesota, Hawaii, Oregon, Idaho and Maryland, and against North Carolina's pure race where notice does not come into it at all. No Missouri opinion classifying the state was fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. For a mineral owner the practical difference is real and runs in your favour: in a race notice state an unrecorded mineral deed loses to a later purchaser who recorded first even if that purchaser had heard about it informally, and in Missouri it does not, provided the actual notice can be proved. The after acquired title rule at 442.430 is the companion a mineral searcher needs, because a severance granted by somebody who did not yet hold the title is a common defect in old chains, and Missouri cures it automatically the moment the grantor's own title arrives. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Missouri decision on what constitutes actual notice, and whether Missouri recognises inquiry notice from possession, which the statute does not mention.

Mont. Code Ann. § 70-21-304

Every Montana conveyance of real property other than a lease for a term not exceeding one year is void against a subsequent purchaser or encumbrancer of the same property, in good faith and for a valuable consideration, whose conveyance is first duly recorded. The section reaches encumbrancers expressly, including the assignee of a mortgage, lease or other conditional estate.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 70-21-304. This is a seventh distinct wording across the states on this record and its ancestry is stated in the code itself, which is unusual and useful: the section's history line traces it to the Compiled Statutes of 1887 and then to California Civil Code section 1214, based on Field Civil Code section 530. So Montana's rule descends from the Field code line rather than from the 1846 Revised Statutes model that Michigan's and North Dakota's near-identical sections come from. Two features distinguish it from those two in substance and not just in wording: it names encumbrancers alongside purchasers and reaches the assignee of a mortgage, lease or other conditional estate, and it carves out a lease of a year or less, which is the same carve-out Oklahoma makes although Oklahoma also requires actual possession for it. No Montana opinion classifying the state as a notice or a race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so no label is applied here.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-238

All deeds, mortgages and other instruments that are required to be or may be recorded take effect and are in force from and after the time of delivering them to the register of deeds for recording, and not before, as to all creditors and subsequent purchasers in good faith without notice. All such instruments are void as to creditors and subsequent purchasers without notice whose own instruments are recorded before them, though they remain valid between the parties. A deed is recorded in the order and as of the time it is delivered for that purpose, and is considered recorded from the time of delivery, in the county where the real estate or any part of it lies.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 76-238, with the timing rule at 76-237 and the place of recording at 76-245. The formulation combines both elements: a later claimant must be without notice AND must have recorded first. Nebraska has also legislated one qualification on possession as notice that no other state here has, and it is agricultural in origin: possession of agricultural or residential real estate by somebody related to the record owner within the third degree of consanguinity or affinity does not serve as notice to a creditor or subsequent purchaser where that person claims under a lease entered into on or after July 16, 2004 that purports to run beyond a year and was not recorded, unless the buyer got a written copy of the lease first. In a state where family members farm each other's ground that is a real trap closed. Three other states here have legislated on possession and notice and no two of them agree. Oregon's ORS 93.710 makes the recording of a mineral interest notice to third persons irrespective of whether the party granted it is in possession, which matters because a severed mineral owner never is. Maryland's Real Prop. s. 3-202 goes the other way and makes possession inconsistent with the record title constructive notice of whatever an inquiry of the possessor would disclose. And South Carolina's s. 30-7-90 abolishes the doctrine outright, providing that no possession of property described in a recordable instrument operates as notice of it. Nebraska's is narrower than any of the three and turns on who the possessor is rather than on possession as such. No Nebraska opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so this record applies no label.

NRS 111.325, Unrecorded conveyances void as against subsequent bona fide purchaser for value when conveyance recorded

Nevada records with the recorder of the county where the property sits, and the chapter states each half of the rule in its own section. A conveyance of real property, or an instrument agreeing to convey it or by which it may be affected, must be recorded to operate as notice to third persons, though it is valid and binding between the parties without recording. Once recorded, it imparts notice to all persons of its contents from the time of filing, and subsequent purchasers and mortgagees are deemed to take with that notice. And a conveyance not recorded is void as against a subsequent purchaser in good faith and for a valuable consideration of the same property whose own conveyance is first duly recorded, which makes the rule race notice: the later buyer must both lack notice and get to the recorder first.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at NRS 111.315, 111.320 and 111.325 on 2026-08-01, in the course of reading the whole chapter. Nothing in chapter 111 is specific to minerals, which the dormancy rule on this page records with its counts, so a severed mineral interest is recorded and searched here on exactly the same terms as any other interest in land. What is specific to minerals sits in chapter 517 instead, where a location certificate for a mining claim is recorded with the county recorder and separately with the federal government, and the filing fees for those documents are set by NRS 517.185. The mechanics of the mining claim filings were not read beyond that.

RSA 477:7, Validity

Two sections say it twice and slightly differently, and both are in force. No deed of bargain and sale, mortgage or other conveyance of real estate, and no lease for more than seven years from its making, is valid to hold the same against any person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs only, unless the deed or lease is acknowledged and recorded according to the chapter. And separately, every deed or other conveyance of real estate, and every court order or other instrument which affects title to any interest in real estate, except probate records and tax liens exempt by law from recording, must be recorded at length in the registry of deeds for the county or counties in which the real estate lies, and is not effective as against bona fide purchasers for value until so recorded. Real estate may be conveyed by deed executed by any person or their attorney, acknowledged and recorded as the chapter directs, without any other act or ceremony whatever, and a conveyance not executed under seal is as effectual as though sealed.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 477:7, 477:3-a and 477:1 on 2026-08-03. RSA 477:7 traces to the Revised Statutes and was last touched in 1988; RSA 477:3-a was added in 1975. The two formulations are worth holding apart because they protect different classes. RSA 477:7 says an unrecorded conveyance holds nothing against ANY PERSON but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, which on its face is harsher than a notice statute and closer to a race rule, since it does not ask what the other person knew. RSA 477:3-a says an unrecorded instrument is not effective as against BONA FIDE PURCHASERS FOR VALUE, which does. This record read the text of both and does not attempt to reconcile them, because reconciling them is a question of New Hampshire decisions and none was fetched, so no label of notice, race or race notice is applied to this state at all. What can be said without any decision is the practical instruction, which is the same either way: record. Note also the SEVEN YEAR lease line, which is longer than the one year in Idaho and the two years in Maine, and the requirement to record in EACH county the real estate lies in. WHAT IS NOT READ: any New Hampshire decision on the relationship between 477:7 and 477:3-a, and whether possession gives inquiry notice, which neither section mentions.

N.J.S.A. § 46:26A-12

New Jersey records with the county recording officer, and its priority rule is N.J.S.A. 46:26A-12, which does two different things in two consecutive clauses. Subsection a. supplies constructive notice: any recorded document affecting the title to real property is, FROM THE TIME OF RECORDING, notice to all subsequent purchasers, mortgagees and judgment creditors of the execution of the document and its contents. Subsection c. then supplies the priority: a deed or other conveyance of an interest in real property shall be of no effect against subsequent JUDGMENT CREDITORS WITHOUT NOTICE, and against subsequent BONA FIDE PURCHASERS AND MORTGAGEES for valuable consideration without notice AND WHOSE CONVEYANCE OR MORTGAGE IS RECORDED, unless the earlier conveyance is evidenced by a document that is first recorded. Read the two limbs against each other, because the difference is the whole rule. The later purchaser or mortgagee has to satisfy three things to defeat an unrecorded mineral deed: value, absence of notice, AND recording their own instrument. The later judgment creditor has to satisfy one: absence of notice. Nothing requires the judgment creditor to record anything. So New Jersey is race-notice as against buyers and mortgagees and pure notice as against judgment creditors, in a single sentence. For a mineral owner the consequence is direct: an unrecorded mineral deed is exposed not only to the next purchaser of the land but to any creditor who docketed a judgment against the record owner without knowing about it, and the creditor did not have to win a race to get there. Subsection b. rounds it off from the other direction: a claim under a recorded document is not subject to the effect of a later recorded or unrecorded document unless the claimant was on notice of it. Note also that 46:26A-12(a) opens NOTWITHSTANDING THE PROVISIONS OF P.L.2021, C.371, which is New Jersey's address redaction law, and what that now means for a searcher is dealt with separately on this page.

Checked August 5, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from N.J.S.A. 46:26A-12 on the verbatim mirror, with chapter 26A of Title 46 walked end to end through the Previous and Next chain, twelve sections, END OF CHAIN reached at 46:26A-12 and 46:26A-13 probed and confirmed absent on the body rather than on the status code. Three other states on this record run their priority rules against judgment creditors and all three were read for comparison: Alabama and Pennsylvania name judgment creditors in terms, and North Dakota reaches an attachment or judgment against the owner of record entered before the conveyance is recorded, which is the same creditor worded without the phrase, and which a search for the phrase missed until the 2026-08-05 audit ran the comparison in the other direction. None of the three splits the test between creditors and purchasers the way this sentence does, and North Dakota is the clean contrast: its creditor limb runs on recording time alone and New Jersey's runs on notice alone. How a New Jersey court reconciles the recording requirement in one limb with its absence in the other is case law and no case law was read for this page.

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 14-9-3

An unrecorded New Mexico instrument does not affect the title or rights of any purchaser, mortgagee in good faith or judgment lien creditor who had no knowledge of it. Possession alone under an unrecorded executory real estate contract neither imputes knowledge to a later purchaser nor creates a duty to inquire.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read from the same allowlisted mirror, current as of January 1, 2024. This is a sixth distinct wording across the states on this record: it turns on knowledge rather than on notice, value or first recording, and its second sentence then closes the gap that possession would otherwise open. That second sentence is the practically useful half for anyone reading a chain of title, because it means occupation of the ground under an unrecorded contract is not a red flag a purchaser is obliged to chase. No New Mexico opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so no label is applied here.

N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 291

A conveyance of real property within the state, once duly acknowledged or proved and certified, may be recorded in the office of the clerk of the county where the property is, and the county clerk or city registrar must record it on request of any party on tender of the lawful fees. Every such conveyance not so recorded is void as against any person who subsequently purchases, or acquires by exchange, or contracts to purchase or acquire by exchange, the same real property or any portion of it, or acquires by assignment the rent to accrue from it, in good faith and for a valuable consideration, from the same vendor or assignor or their distributees or devisees, and whose conveyance, contract or assignment is first duly recorded. It is likewise void against the lien arising from payments made on execution of or pursuant to a contract with the same vendor, where that contract is made in good faith and first duly recorded. The section also directs that where a conveyance of residential real property is recorded, the clerk of the county or the city registrar must mail a written notice of the conveyance to the owner of record, with a heading printed in twenty point bold type.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 291 of the Real Property Law. This is the race-notice shape, the same as Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California and Wyoming: the later claimant must be in good faith, must have given value, and must have recorded first. Kansas and Texas ask only about notice, Louisiana asks about neither. Two New York particulars are worth carrying. The section protects a contract vendee and an assignee of rents alongside a purchaser, so the class of people an unrecorded instrument loses to is wider than the usual formulation. And the mailing duty at the end has no equivalent anywhere else on this record: when a conveyance of RESIDENTIAL real property is recorded, the clerk must post a written notice of it to the owner of record, in a form whose heading the statute specifies down to the point size. That is an anti-fraud measure aimed at forged deeds, and while it does not reach a mineral conveyance as such, it tells you something about how New York thinks about the record. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 294-a on assignment of rents, which the quoted text cross-refers to, and any New York decision applying section 291.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 47-18, Conveyances, contracts to convey, options, and leases of land

North Carolina decides priority by the clock and by nothing else. No conveyance of land, contract to convey, option to purchase or convey, lease of land for more than three years, right of first refusal or right of first offer is valid to pass any property interest as against lien creditors or purchasers for value from the same grantor except from the time of its registration in the county where the land lies, and in each county where any part of it lies. Instruments registered with the register of deeds have priority based on the order of registration as determined by the time of registration. Where two are registered simultaneously the earliest document number breaks the tie, or the sequential book and page number where there is no document number, and that presumption is rebuttable.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 47-18(a) on 2026-08-02 from chapter 47 fetched whole. The words that are absent are the point. Every other recording rule read for this record conditions the later claimant's win on being without notice of the earlier instrument, or on being without notice AND first to record. This section conditions it on nothing but registration, and the priority sentence added in 2003 and refined in 2021 says so again in terms of time of registration. So a North Carolina purchaser who knows perfectly well about an unregistered mineral deed can still take free of it by getting to the register of deeds first. What that means for a mineral owner is that recording is not evidence of good faith, it is the whole of the entitlement. Subsection (b) preserves an old rule for instruments executed before 1885 and is spent. The recording office is the register of deeds of the county, and North Carolina keeps a second book beside the usual grantor and grantee indices, which the rule below describes. No North Carolina decision construing the section was read.

N.D.C.C. § 47-19-41

An unrecorded North Dakota conveyance of real estate is void as against a subsequent purchaser in good faith and for valuable consideration whose conveyance is first recorded, and as against an attachment or judgment against the owner of record entered before the conveyance is recorded. That the first recorded conveyance is a quitclaim deed does not by itself affect the later purchaser's good faith.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 47-19-41 in the Century Code chapter PDF for chapter 47-19. This is a fifth distinct formulation across the states on this record and it combines both elements: good faith and value, and first recording. Colorado's statute calls itself a race-notice statute in terms; Texas turns on notice and valuable consideration; Oklahoma says simply that an unrecorded instrument is not valid against third persons; Ohio calls it fraudulent as against a later bona fide purchaser without knowledge. The section also states that it is itself notice to all who claim under unrecorded instruments that prior recording of later instruments may nullify their title, and that the record of an instrument is valid as the legal record whether or not the instrument was entitled to be recorded. No North Dakota opinion classifying the state has been fetched, so no label is applied.

R.C. 5301.25(A)

Ohio deeds and other instruments conveying or encumbering land must be recorded with the county recorder of the county where the premises are situated, and until they are recorded or filed for record they are fraudulent as against a subsequent bona fide purchaser who had no knowledge of them at the time of purchase.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 5301.25, whose page states it is effective January 30, 2014 under House Bill 72 of the 130th General Assembly and was last updated December 27, 2023. This is a fourth distinct wording, set against the three states that were on this record when it was written, and the difference is not cosmetic. Colorado's statute calls itself a race-notice statute in terms. Texas voids an unrecorded conveyance as against a creditor or a purchaser for value without notice. Oklahoma simply says an unrecorded instrument is not valid against third persons. Ohio says it is fraudulent as against a subsequent bona fide purchaser without knowledge. No Ohio opinion classifying the state as notice or race-notice has been fetched, so no label is applied here.

16 O.S. § 15

In Oklahoma recording is not needed for a deed, mortgage or contract to be valid between the parties to it, but no deed, mortgage, contract, bond, lease or other instrument relating to real estate is valid against third persons unless it is acknowledged and recorded. The only exception in the section is a lease of a year or less accompanied by actual possession.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the Legislature's complete-title PDF for Title 16. The comparison with Colorado and Texas is the useful part and all three are worded differently. Colorado's statute contains the sentence "This is a race-notice recording statute." and protects the party who records first without notice. Texas voids an unrecorded conveyance as against a creditor or a subsequent purchaser for valuable consideration without notice. Oklahoma's section is blunter than either: it does not qualify the rule with notice or with value in the same sentence, it simply provides that an unrecorded instrument is not valid against third persons. What this record has not read is any Oklahoma opinion classifying the state as notice or race-notice, so no label is applied to it here.

ORS s. 93.640, Unrecorded instrument affecting title void as to subsequent purchaser

Every conveyance, deed, land sale contract, assignment of a seller's or purchaser's interest in a land sale contract, or other agreement or memorandum of one affecting the title of real property in Oregon which is not recorded as provided by law is void as against any subsequent purchaser in good faith and for a valuable consideration of the same real property, or any portion of it, whose own instrument is first filed for record, and as against that subsequent purchaser's heirs and assigns. The definition of the covered instruments expressly includes mortgages, trust deeds, and assignments for security purposes or assignments solely of proceeds given by purchasers or sellers under a land sale contract. A memorandum will do instead of the instrument itself, provided it contains the date of the instrument being memorialised, the names of the parties, a legal description of the real property, and the nature of the interest created, is signed by the person from whom the interest is intended to pass, and is acknowledged or proved in the manner provided for deeds.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at ORS 93.640(1) on 2026-08-02. Both limbs are required, good faith and for value AND first to record, which is the shape this record has been calling race-notice in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming, Utah, Minnesota and Hawaii, as against the notice-only shape in Kansas and Texas. No Oregon opinion classifying the state was fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. Set it against North Carolina, which is on this record as pure race: there the first to register wins and notice does not come into it at all. Subsection (2) is a separate five-day rule for assignments of sheriffs' certificates of sale, void against a later good faith purchaser for value whose assignment is first recorded if not recorded within five days of execution. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Oregon decision on what good faith requires, and in particular whether possession or inquiry notice defeats it.

Recording of Deeds, Regulation, Act of May 12, 1925, P.L. 613, No. 327, § 1, as amended

A Pennsylvania deed, conveyance or contract intending to convey land must be acknowledged or proved and recorded in the office for the recording of deeds in the county where the land sits. One that is not is adjudged fraudulent and void as against any subsequent bona fide purchaser, mortgagee or holder of a judgment duly entered, who took without actual or constructive notice, unless the earlier instrument is recorded before the later deed is recorded or the judgment is entered.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the act's own text as published by the General Assembly, section 1 as amended June 12, 1931, P.L. 558, No. 191. This is an eighth distinct formulation across the states on this record and it combines elements that elsewhere appear separately. Like Ohio's it uses the word fraudulent rather than void or invalid. Like Texas's it turns on notice, and it says actual or constructive notice in terms. Like North Dakota's it reaches a judgment creditor and not only a purchaser. And it then adds a race element that neither Ohio's nor Texas's carries in the same sentence: the earlier instrument survives if it is recorded before the later deed is recorded or the later judgment entered. No Pennsylvania opinion classifying the Commonwealth as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so no label is applied here. Pennsylvania's recording provisions are uncodified: Title 21 of the Consolidated Statutes is marked Reserved and has never been implemented, so this is read as an unconsolidated act rather than as a code section.

R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-11-1, Conveyances required to be in writing and recorded

Every conveyance of lands, tenements or hereditaments, absolutely, by way of mortgage, or on condition, use or trust, for any term longer than one year, and every declaration of trust concerning it, is VOID unless made in writing, duly signed, acknowledged, delivered, and recorded in the records of land evidence in the town or city where the land is situated. The proviso is where the work is done: if delivered, the conveyance is valid and binding as between the parties and their heirs, as against those taking by gift or devise, and as against THOSE HAVING NOTICE OF IT, even though not acknowledged or recorded. A lease for a year or less is valid though made by parol, and a lease for more than a year may be recorded by a memorandum containing the names of the parties to be charged, a description of the real estate and the duration of the lease including renewal and purchase options. Recording is constructive notice to all persons of the contents of the instruments recorded, so far as they are genuine.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 34-11-1, 34-13-1 and 34-13-2 on 2026-08-03. TWO THINGS ARE WORTH SEPARATING AND THE FIRST IS THE DRAFTING. Rhode Island states the sanction as VOIDNESS rather than as ineffectiveness against a class, which is harsher on its face than every other New England formulation read this week, and then gives it all back in the proviso. Connecticut's § 47-10, Vermont's 27 V.S.A. § 342 and New Hampshire's RSA 477:7 all say an unrecorded conveyance is not effectual to hold the land against any person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, which asks nothing about knowledge. Rhode Island's proviso asks about knowledge in terms: the conveyance binds THOSE HAVING NOTICE THEREOF. So of the five New England states on this record, Rhode Island and Massachusetts write notice into the section and Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire do not. THIS RECORD STILL APPLIES NO LABEL OF NOTICE, RACE OR RACE NOTICE TO RHODE ISLAND, because no Rhode Island decision was fetched and the section says nothing about who records first. SECOND, THE OFFICE AND ITS QUALIFICATION. The records of land evidence are kept by the TOWN OR CITY, because Rhode Island has no county government, which makes it the third state on this record whose land records are not county records, after Vermont and Connecticut. And § 34-13-2 makes a recording constructive notice of the contents SO FAR AS THEY ARE GENUINE, a qualification with no counterpart found here: the record puts a searcher on notice of a genuine instrument, not of a forged one. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Rhode Island decision on §§ 34-11-1 or 34-13-2; whether possession gives inquiry notice; and whether any town or city keeps a separate index for mineral instruments.

S.C. Code s. 30-7-10, Validity of conveyances as to subsequent purchasers and creditors

A long list of instruments, running from deeds of conveyance in fee simple or for life through deeds of trust, mortgages, marriage settlements, leases for more than twelve months, statutory liens on buildings and lands for materials or labour, contracts for the purchase and sale of real property, and generally all instruments in writing conveying an interest in real estate required to be recorded, are valid so as to affect the rights of subsequent creditors, whether lien creditors or simple contract creditors, or purchasers for valuable consideration without notice, ONLY FROM THE DAY AND HOUR when they are recorded in the office of the register of deeds or clerk of court of the county where the property is. The second sentence puts a duty on the other side: in the case of a subsequent purchaser, or a subsequent lien creditor for valuable consideration without notice, the instrument evidencing that subsequent conveyance or lien must itself be filed for record in order for its holder to claim under the section, and priority is determined by the time of filing for record.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at S.C. Code s. 30-7-10 on 2026-08-03. The later claimant must be without notice AND must have recorded, with priority by time of filing, which is the combination this record has been calling race notice in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming, Utah, Minnesota, Hawaii, Oregon, Idaho and Maryland, as against the notice-only shape in Kansas, Texas and Missouri, and North Carolina's pure race. No South Carolina opinion classifying the state was fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. The words DAY AND HOUR are not decoration: South Carolina fixes priority to the hour of filing, which matters where two instruments touching the same minerals reach the counter on one day. Read this section together with s. 30-7-90 on the same page, because they are two halves of one policy. This section makes the record decisive; that one removes the main non-record route by which a purchaser could be fixed with knowledge. Note also the recording office, which is not constant across the state: the register of deeds, or the clerk of court in those counties where the office of register of deeds has been abolished. WHAT IS NOT READ: which counties those are.

SDCL 43-28-17, Priority of first recorded conveyance of real property--Conveyance defined

Every conveyance of real property other than a lease for a term not exceeding one year is void as against a subsequent purchaser or encumbrancer, including the assignee of a mortgage, lease or other conditional estate, who takes in good faith and for a valuable consideration and whose conveyance is first duly recorded. All three conditions must hold together, which makes South Dakota a race-notice state rather than a pure race one. Conveyance is defined broadly for this purpose, embracing every written instrument by which any estate or interest in real property is created or aliened. An unrecorded instrument remains valid between the parties to it and against anyone who has notice of it, so recording protects against strangers rather than perfecting the deed itself, and the recording and deposit of a properly proved and certified instrument is constructive notice to purchasers and encumbrancers from the time it is recorded.

Checked August 4, 2026. Read at SDCL 43-28-17, 43-28-14 and 43-28-15 on 2026-08-04. Chapter 43-28 was read whole, 28,025 characters, and the words mineral, oil, gas and coal return zero occurrences in it, so there is no mineral-specific recording provision and a mineral instrument records like any other. This is the opposite arrangement from Delaware and North Carolina, both pure race, where being first to the office settles it whatever the second taker knew.

T.C.A. § 66-26-105, with §§ 66-26-101 to 66-26-104

Tennessee is a race notice state and the timing hook is unusually precise. T.C.A. 66-26-105 gives an instrument first registered, or first noted for registration, preference over one of earlier date that was noted for registration afterwards, unless it is proved in a court of equity that the party claiming under the later instrument had full notice of the earlier one. So winning the race is not enough if you knew. The moment that counts is the NOTING FOR REGISTRATION rather than the date on the instrument or the day the register gets round to transcribing it: T.C.A. 66-26-102 provides that registered instruments are notice to all the world from the time they are noted for registration and take effect from that time. Around those two sections sit the consequences of not recording. T.C.A. 66-26-101 makes an instrument good between the parties and their heirs and representatives without any registration at all, but as to everyone else without actual notice only from the noting for registration. T.C.A. 66-26-103 makes an unregistered instrument null and void as against existing or subsequent creditors of, or bona fide purchasers from, the maker without notice. And T.C.A. 66-26-104 adds a trap with a clock on it: an instrument entitled to registration that is not registered within sixty days following the death of its maker is null and void as against innocent purchasers for present valuable consideration from the people who would have taken the property but for that instrument, leaving the holder only a damages action against the transferor.

Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from T.C.A. 66-26-101 through 66-26-105 on the verbatim mirror, chapter 26 of Title 66 walked end to end through the mirror's Previous and Next chain, sixteen sections. Chapter 26 is called Effect of Authentication and Registration; the list of what may be registered is in chapter 24 and the acknowledgment rules are in chapter 22.

Tex. Prop. Code § 13.001

An unrecorded conveyance of real property or of an interest in it is void as to a creditor or to a subsequent purchaser for valuable consideration without notice, but it still binds the parties to it, their heirs, and any later purchaser who does not pay value or who has notice of it.

Checked July 30, 2026. Section read in full on the official statutes site, current through the 89th 2nd Called Legislative Session, 2025. The contrast with Colorado is the useful part and it is a real difference rather than a wording variation: Colorado's statute protects the party who records first without notice, and describes itself as a race-notice statute; the Texas provision turns on notice and valuable consideration without a first-to-record requirement in the same sentence. Subsection (b) preserves the instrument against the parties, their heirs, and a purchaser who does not pay value or who has notice.

Utah Code § 57-3-103

Each document not recorded as the title provides is void as against any subsequent purchaser of the same real property, or any portion of it, if the subsequent purchaser bought in good faith and for a valuable consideration and their document is first duly recorded. Separately, each document executed, acknowledged and certified in the manner the title prescribes imparts notice to all persons of its contents from the time it is recorded with the appropriate county recorder, and that expressly includes a copy of a notice of location of a mining claim complying with the mining title. Failure to record does not affect the validity of a document as between the parties to it and all other persons who have notice of it. A recorded document that recites only a nominal consideration, or names the grantee as trustee, or otherwise purports to be in trust without naming beneficiaries or stating the terms, does not charge a third person with notice of the grantor's interest or of any other unnamed person's interest.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 57-3-102 and 57-3-103. This is the race-notice shape, the same as Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York and Wyoming: the later claimant must be in good faith, must have given value, and must have recorded first. Kansas and Texas ask only about notice, Louisiana asks about neither. Two Utah details are worth carrying for a mineral searcher. The notice section names a copy of a notice of location of a mining claim among the documents that impart notice on recording, which ties the recording title to the mining title directly and is a link this record has not seen stated elsewhere. And subsection (4) is a warning about what recording does NOT tell you: a document reciting a nominal consideration, or naming a grantee as trustee without naming the beneficiaries or the terms, charges nobody with notice of who is actually behind it. In a state where mineral interests are often held through trusts and nominees, that is the sentence explaining why a chain of title can be complete and still not tell you who owns anything. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Utah decision applying either section.

27 V.S.A. § 342, Acknowledgment and recording required

A deed of bargain and sale, a mortgage or other conveyance of land in fee simple or for term of life, or a lease for more than one year from its making, is not effectual to hold the lands against any person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, unless the deed or other conveyance is acknowledged and recorded. Deeds and other conveyances of lands, or of an estate or interest in land, must be signed by the grantor, acknowledged before a notary public, and recorded at length in the clerk's office of the TOWN in which the lands lie. A deed referring to a survey prepared or revised after 1 July 1988 may be recorded only if the survey accompanies it or the deed cites where the survey is already recorded, and a conveyance that subdivides a parcel or changes its boundaries after 1 January 2020 must be accompanied by or cite a recorded survey plat; failing that does not void the deed or make the title unmarketable, which is stated in the section. A lease of more than one year need not be recorded at length if a notice or memorandum of lease carrying nine listed particulars is recorded instead. A deed not acknowledged may be recorded while proceedings to prove its execution are pending, and is as effectual as an acknowledged one for sixty days, continuing until six business days after those proceedings end.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 27 V.S.A. §§ 342, 341 and 378 on 2026-08-03. Two things about this rule are worth a searcher's attention and neither is the rule itself. FIRST, THE OFFICE IS THE TOWN. Vermont has counties and they appear in the statutes, but § 341 requires recording in the clerk's office of the TOWN in which the lands lie, and a Vermont title search is therefore conducted town by town in the office of a town clerk. That is a fourth distinct answer on this record to the question of which office holds the land records, after the ordinary county recorder, Alaska's state Department of Natural Resources recording districts, and Minnesota's split between a county recorder and a registrar of titles. A severed Vermont mine or quarry is recorded in the same town office but, under § 308, in a separate book kept for that purpose. SECOND, THE FORMULATION IS NEW HAMPSHIRE'S RATHER THAN THE COMMON ONE. Most states on this record void an unrecorded conveyance as against a later good faith purchaser who records first, which asks what the later purchaser knew. Vermont's § 342, like New Hampshire's RSA 477:7, says instead that an unrecorded conveyance is not effectual to hold the land against ANY PERSON but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, which on its face asks nothing about knowledge at all. New Hampshire has a second section, RSA 477:3-a, pointing the other way, and its page refuses to reconcile the two. Nothing equivalent to RSA 477:3-a was found in Vermont's chapter, so the two neighbours reach the same words from different directions. THIS RECORD APPLIES NO LABEL OF NOTICE, RACE OR RACE NOTICE TO VERMONT, because doing so would need Vermont decisions and none was fetched. The practical instruction does not depend on the label: acknowledge, and record, in the town where the land lies. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Vermont decision on § 342; whether possession gives inquiry notice, which the sections do not mention; and whether town clerks in fact maintain the § 308 mines and quarries book.

Va. Code § 55.1-407

Every written contract, every deed conveying an estate or term, every deed of gift, deed of trust or mortgage conveying real estate, and every bill of sale or contract for the sale of personal property left in the grantor's possession, is void as to all purchasers for valuable consideration without notice who are not parties to it, and as to lien creditors, until and except from the time it is recorded in the county or city where the property is. Recording elsewhere does not help: the instrument stays void as to other property until recorded where that property lies. Mere possession of the real estate is not, of itself, notice to purchasers for value. An instrument in the form of a quitclaim or release does not stop its grantee being a purchaser for valuable consideration without notice, and is not itself notice of any unrecorded conveyance or encumbrance. Creditors and purchasers are not confined to those of and from the grantor: they extend to everyone who, but for the deed, would have had title to the property or a right to subject it to their debts.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read in the Code of Virginia on the Division of Legislative Automated Systems site, which stamps the page 7/31/2026 as the date the compilation is current to. Three provisions in the same chapter change what this rule means and each was read: section 55.1-408 makes recording in one county useless as to property in another; section 55.1-412 construes "creditors" and "purchasers" broadly enough to reach anyone who would otherwise have had title; and section 55.1-413 gives a subsequent purchaser a lien for purchase money paid before notice, even where the earlier deed was recorded before he became a complete purchaser. The quotable oddity is the express statement that possession of the land is not of itself notice to a purchaser for value, which cuts against the common assumption that somebody living on a tract puts the world on inquiry. No Virginia opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so this record applies no label.

RCW 65.08.060, Terms defined

Washington's recording officer is the county auditor, and in a charter county it is whichever county official that county's charter makes responsible for recording instruments. So the office to write to depends on the county's form of government and not only on the state. A conveyance of real property may be recorded once acknowledged, and an unrecorded conveyance is void against a later good faith purchaser or mortgagee for value from the same seller who records first. An instrument is deemed recorded the minute it is filed for record. Conveyance is defined broadly enough to take in every written instrument creating, transferring, mortgaging or assigning an interest in real property.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at RCW 65.08.070 and the definitions at RCW 65.08.060 on 2026-08-01. The recording rule is race notice on its face: the later purchaser must take in good faith and for value and must record first. Washington adds a second index a mineral owner has to care about, and it is specific to this subject: RCW 78.22.070 makes the county auditor keep a dormant mineral interest index recording every statement of claim and every notice of intention filed under the dormant mineral act. A title search that stops at the grantor and grantee indexes can therefore miss the filings that decide whether a severed interest is still alive.

W. Va. Code § 40-1-9

A West Virginia contract, deed, deed of gift, deed of trust or mortgage conveying real estate is void as to creditors, and as to subsequent purchasers for valuable consideration without notice, until and except from the time it is duly admitted to record in the county where the property is. The protection turns on notice and on value, and it reaches creditors as a class rather than only judgment holders.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 40-1-9 on the Legislature's own code site, whose section pages carry the bill history for the section; this one shows amendments in 2015, 1963 and 1961. This is a ninth distinct wording across the states on this record and the phrase that distinguishes it is "until and except from the time that it is duly admitted to record", which frames the rule as a period of vulnerability that ends on recording rather than as a contest between two instruments. Compare Pennsylvania's, which says an unrecorded deed is fraudulent and void and then adds a race element in the same sentence, and Montana's, which turns on who recorded first in good faith and for value. West Virginia names creditors as a protected class alongside purchasers for value without notice. No West Virginia opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so no label is applied here.

Wis. Stat. s. 706.08, Nonrecording, effect

Except for patents issued by the United States or the state, a conveyance that is not recorded as provided by law is void against any subsequent purchaser, in good faith and for valuable consideration, of the same real estate or any portion of it, whose conveyance is recorded first. Recording happens with the register of deeds for the county. On top of the ordinary indexes Wisconsin runs two things specific to minerals: the register of deeds records all conveyances of mineral interests in the statutory index, and must record every statement of claim under the lapse statute in a way that lets the existence of a mineral interest be determined by reference to the parcel of land above it, using a uniform form the register supplies.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Wis. Stat. s. 706.08(1)(a) on 2026-08-01, with s. 706.055 and s. 706.057(7) for the mineral-specific indexing. The indexing duty in 706.057(7) is the part a searcher should care about and it is unusual in a state that indexes by grantor and grantee: it requires the mineral claims to be findable FROM THE PARCEL, which is how somebody who owns a piece of land would naturally look. Whether any given register of deeds exposes that in a way a member of the public can search was not established, because no county's index was opened.

Wyo. Stat. § 34-1-120

Every conveyance of real estate in Wyoming which is not recorded as required by law is void as against any subsequent purchaser in good faith and for valuable consideration of the same real estate or any portion of it, whose conveyance is first duly recorded. Every deed, mortgage, instrument or conveyance touching any interest in lands, made and recorded according to the chapter, is notice to and takes precedence of any subsequent purchaser from the time the instrument is delivered at the office of the county clerk for record. The same section provides for recording instruments or certified copies issued by an agency, department or bureau of the United States or of the state of Wyoming, including those relating to real estate on an Indian reservation for any period it has been held by the United States in trust.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 34-1-120 and 34-1-121. This is a race-notice formulation and it is the same shape as Colorado's, Michigan's, Montana's and North Dakota's: the later claimant must be in good faith, must have given value, and must have recorded first. Kansas and Texas ask only about notice, Louisiana asks about neither. The second section is the one that matters to a title searcher, because it fixes the moment precedence attaches as delivery at the county clerk's office rather than the clerk's later act of recording. The provision for federally certified instruments is worth knowing in a state with as much federal and trust land as Wyoming, and it connects to this site's federal record. WHAT IS NOT READ: the indexing provisions, and any Wyoming opinion applying either section.

43 U.S.C. § 299

Every patent issued under the Stock-Raising Homestead Act reserved all coal and other minerals to the United States, so a surface owner can hold clean title to the land and own none of what is beneath it.

Checked July 29, 2026. Section read in full at uscode.house.gov, which stamps the text as containing those laws in effect on July 28, 2026. This is the reason a county records search can come back clean and still miss the reservation: it happened in the federal patent that first put the land into private hands, not in any later county instrument. The same subsection sets what a mineral developer must do before using the surface, which is recorded as a separate rule on this record.

C.R.S. § 10-11-123

Colorado requires a title insurance commitment to state when a mineral estate has been severed, and to warn that the mineral owner may be able to enter and use the surface without the surface owner's permission.

Checked July 25, 2026. Full text of the section read at colorado.public.law, current through Fall 2025. The section also requires the commitment to state "that a mineral estate has been severed, leased, or otherwise conveyed from the surface estate".

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 70-2-33(E)

New Mexico's Oil and Gas Act defines the owner as the person who has the right to drill into and produce from a pool and to appropriate the production, which locates the mineral interest in the right to develop rather than in possession of the ground.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the definitions section of the Oil and Gas Act. Note the scope: this is the definition used in that Act, so it governs the conservation and pooling machinery rather than standing as a general statement of New Mexico property law. It is recorded because it is the clearest statutory statement found in this pass on what the mineral side of a split estate consists of, and because it pairs with the surface owner definition in the Surface Owners Protection Act to show the split in statute. The official text at nmonesource.com could not be extracted, so this is quoted from an allowlisted mirror that states it is current as of January 1, 2024; anything enacted after that date is not reflected here.

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 70-12-3(D)

For the Surface Owners Protection Act a surface owner is a person holding legal or equitable title, as shown in the records of the county clerk, to the surface of the property on which the operator has the legal right to conduct oil and gas operations. The definition assumes the two estates are in different hands.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the definitions section of the Surface Owners Protection Act. The definition is doing two things worth separating. It identifies the surface owner by the county record rather than by possession or occupation, which matters because the Act's notice duties run to that person. And its closing words assume the operator already has the legal right to conduct operations on that land, which is the split estate stated as a premise rather than argued for. The same section defines reclaim as substantially restoring the affected surface to the condition that existed before operations, or as otherwise agreed in writing. Quoted from an allowlisted mirror stating it is current as of January 1, 2024, because the official copy would not extract.

Ind. Code § 32-23-10-2

An Indiana interest in coal, oil and gas, and other minerals that is unused for twenty years is extinguished, and ownership reverts to the owner of the interest out of which it was carved, unless a statement of claim is filed in accordance with the chapter. The reversion is expressed as automatic: the statute does not require the person who benefits to serve notice, record an affidavit or file anything first.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at IC 32-23-10-2 in the 2025 Indiana Code on the General Assembly's own site. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the predecessor of this chapter against a due process challenge in Texaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U.S. 516 (1982), which is on the federal record here and set out on the dormancy page; note that the Court described the Act as reverting a lapsed interest to the current surface owner, while the text quoted below reverts it to the owner of the interest out of which it was carved, and whether that is a substantive change or a recodification is not established on this record. Two features distinguish this from every other lapse state on this record and both are in the words. First, it is self-executing. Ohio requires the surface owner to serve notice and record an affidavit and gives the holder sixty days; North Dakota requires newspaper publication and gives sixty days; Michigan requires nothing of the surface owner but still frames the vesting as of the date of abandonment. Indiana states the extinguishment and the reversion as consequences of the twenty years passing. Second, the destination is different: every other state on this record sends the interest to the surface owner, and Indiana sends it to "the owner of the interest out of which" it was carved, which is the grantor's estate rather than the surface as such and need not be the same person. The section carries a pre-2002 recodification citation to 32-5-11-1 and was added by P.L.2-2002. WHAT IS NOT READ: Texaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U.S. 516, the Supreme Court decision on this statute's predecessor, which is the reason this state was chosen and which is fetchable at official tier from tile.loc.gov. Nothing here says anything about what that case decided.

Iowa Code s. 557C.1, Lapse of mineral interests in coal, prevention

Iowa's dormancy statute reaches one substance and asks one question, and neither is what a reader arriving from another state will expect. A mineral interest in coal is extinguished twenty years after its creation, transfer or preservation unless a statement of claim is filed, and on extinguishment the ownership reverts to the person who was then the owner of the interest out of which the coal interest was created, transferred or preserved. Nothing in that turns on whether the coal was mined, leased, paid on or thought about. The clock runs from a date on an instrument. Filing a statement of claim preserves the interest for a further twenty years, or for a shorter period if the instrument that created it says so.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Iowa Code ss. 557C.1 and 557C.2 on 2026-08-01, the chapter fetched whole from the Legislature's own site and extracted from its PDF. Three things separate this from every other lapse statute on this record. It is confined to COAL: s. 557C.2 defines a mineral interest in coal as an interest of any kind in coal as described in chapter 207, created by grant, assignment, reservation or otherwise, without limitation on the manner of mining it, and nothing here reaches oil, gas or any other mineral. It runs on the CALENDAR rather than on use: Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington and Wisconsin all ask what the owner did with the interest, and Iowa does not ask. And the reversion goes to the owner of the interest it was carved out of, as Indiana's does, rather than to the surface owner. The clause allowing the creating instrument to specify a period SHORTER than twenty years is unusual and was read twice to be sure of it; nothing was read about how short a period may be.

K.S.A. § 55-1602

An interest in coal, oil, gas or other minerals, if unused for twenty years, lapses unless a statement of claim is filed, and the ownership reverts to the current surface owner. A mineral interest is considered used when any minerals are produced under it; when operations are being conducted on it for injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal of water, gas or other fluid substances; when rentals or royalties are being paid by the owner of the interest to delay or enjoy the use of the mineral rights; when the rights are being exercised on a tract the interest may be unitized or pooled with for production; in the case of coal or other solid minerals, when there is production from a common vein or seam by the owners of the mineral interests; or when taxes are paid on the mineral interest by its owner. Any use pursuant to or authorised by the instrument creating the interest continues all the rights the instrument granted.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 55-1602 and 55-1603 on the Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes site. The list of six uses is close to Indiana's and it includes the one that saves the most interests in practice: PAYING THE TAX on the interest counts. That puts Kansas with Indiana and against Nebraska, which lets a severed interest be entered on the county tax list and then does not count paying it as a use, so an owner can be assessed and paying and still lose the interest. Two further points from the text. The definition covers coal, oil, gas OR OTHER MINERALS, so unlike Michigan the act is not confined to oil and gas. And the reversion is to the CURRENT surface owner, which is Ohio's, North Dakota's, Michigan's and Nebraska's destination and not Indiana's, whose statute sends a lapsed interest to the owner of the interest out of which it was carved. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 55-1607, and any Kansas decision beyond the annotation the revisor prints on section 55-1601, which cites Scully v. Overall for the proposition that an interest lapses and reverts if unused for twenty years with no claim filed.

La. Rev. Stat. § 31:27

A mineral servitude is extinguished by prescription resulting from nonuse for ten years, and also by confusion, by renunciation or express remission, by expiration of the term or the happening of a dissolving condition, and by extinction of the right of the person who established it. Prescription of nonuse commences from the date the servitude is created. It is interrupted by good faith operations for the discovery and production of minerals, meaning operations commenced with a reasonable expectation of discovering and producing minerals in paying quantities at a particular point or depth, continued at the site chosen to that point or depth, and conducted so as to constitute a single operation even though drilling or mining is not going on at all times. It is also interrupted by production of any mineral covered by the act creating the servitude, and where production is the interruption, prescription commences anew from the date actual production ceases.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at articles 27, 28, 29 and 36 of the Mineral Code. Set this against the states on this record whose statutes can end an interest and the differences are not of degree. The period is TEN years, half of the twenty that Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan, Indiana, Kansas and California use and less than half of Nebraska's twenty-three. It runs from the date the right is CREATED rather than from the last thing that happened. Nobody has to give notice, record an affidavit, publish, or sue: the right simply ceases to exist by operation of law. And there is no equivalent of the recorded claim of interest that saves an interest in Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan, Indiana and Nebraska, because what interrupts prescription is real activity in the ground, not a filing. The nearest thing to a filing is acknowledgment by the landowner, which is dealt with in articles this record has not read. WHAT IS NOT READ: articles 30 through 59 on unit operations, shut-in wells, attempts to restore production, acknowledgment and the suspension of prescription by obstacle, which are the machinery around all of this and are substantial. Where the servitude ends the land is simply no longer burdened; there is no interest that moves to anybody, because there was no separate estate.

MCL 554.291(2)

A Michigan oil or gas interest owned by someone other than the surface owner, which has not been sold, leased, mortgaged or transferred by a recorded instrument for twenty years, and for which no drilling permit was issued and no production, withdrawal or underground gas storage use occurred, is deemed abandoned unless a claim of interest is recorded. It then vests in the surface owner as of the date of abandonment.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read on the Michigan Legislature's own site, which states the Compiled Laws are complete through Public Act 20 of 2026. This is the harshest dormancy mechanism on this record and the difference is procedural rather than substantive: Ohio's surface owner must serve notice by certified mail and the holder gets sixty days; North Dakota's must publish for three weeks and the holder gets sixty days; Michigan's statute contains no notice requirement and no procedure for the surface owner at all, and the vesting is dated to the abandonment rather than to any filing. Subsection (1) sets the twenty year clock and lists what stops it: a sale, lease, mortgage or transfer recorded with the register of deeds, a drilling permit issued by the state, actual production or withdrawal from the land or from lands the interest is leased into or pooled or unitized with, or use of the interest in underground gas storage. The section carries an editorial note that the act was held not unconstitutional as applied in Van Slooten v Larsen, 410 Mich 21; 299 NW2d 704 (1980); that opinion was not fetched and nothing is stated here about what it decided beyond the existence of the note.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-229

A severed Nebraska mineral interest is abandoned unless its record owner has, within the twenty-three years immediately before the action is filed, publicly exercised the right of ownership in one of three ways: by acquiring, selling, leasing, pooling, utilizing, mortgaging, encumbering or transferring the interest or any part of it by an instrument properly recorded in the county where the land lies; by drilling or mining for, removing, producing or withdrawing minerals from under the land, or using the geological formations or the spaces or cavities below the surface for any purpose consistent with the rights the severing instrument conveyed or reserved; or by recording a verified claim of interest describing the land, the nature of the interest, the instrument it is claimed under and the claimant's name and address, and stating that they claim the interest and do not intend to abandon it. Any of those extends the interest for a further twenty-three years from the date of the act. Interests of which the State of Nebraska or any of its political subdivisions is the record owner are excepted.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 57-229 on the Nebraska Legislature's own site, which serves each section as its own page. Three features separate this from the other lapse statutes on this record. The period is twenty-three years, where Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan and Indiana all use twenty; nothing read explains the choice. The saving acts are unusually broad on one axis and unusually narrow on another: USING THE PORE SPACE counts, because the second limb reaches using the geological formations or the spaces or cavities below the surface for any purpose consistent with the severing instrument, which no other statute here says; but PAYING THE TAX does not count, and that omission does real work, because Nebraska separately lets a severed mineral interest be entered on the county tax list. An Indiana owner is saved by paying the tax on the interest. A Nebraska owner on the same tax roll is not. And the clock is measured backwards from the filing of the surface owner's action rather than forwards from a fixed date, so an owner who acts before suit is filed is in time. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Nebraska decision applying the section, and what a court makes of an owner who acts after suit is filed but before judgment.

N.D.C.C. § 38-18.1-02

A North Dakota mineral interest unused for the twenty years immediately preceding the first publication of the statutory notice is deemed abandoned unless a statement of claim has been recorded, and title to the abandoned interest vests in the owner of the surface estate on the date of abandonment.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the chapter PDF the North Dakota Legislative Branch publishes for chapter 38-18.1, which is titled Termination of Mineral Interest. Two provisions at the end of the chapter change how this rule should be read and are recorded here rather than as separate rules. Section 38-18.1-07 prohibits waiver of the chapter at any time before the twenty year period expires, so a mineral owner cannot contract out of it in advance. Section 38-18.1-08 states the chapter does not apply to a mineral interest owned by a governmental body or agency and that the chapter is both prospective and retrospective in its application, which means periods of non use completed before the chapter was enacted are not excluded. The surface owner who succeeds to an interest may record a statement of succession in interest.

R.C. 5301.56(B)

Ohio has an operative Dormant Mineral Act. A mineral interest held by anyone other than the surface owner is deemed abandoned and vests in the surface owner if the surface owner completes the statutory notice procedure and none of the statute's exceptions applies, which includes that none of six preserving events has occurred in the preceding twenty years.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read in full on the Ohio Legislative Service Commission's own Revised Code site, which states the section is effective January 30, 2014 under House Bill 72 of the 130th General Assembly. This is the first rule on this record answering the lapse question with a yes, and the reason Ohio was chosen as the fourth state. The vesting is not automatic on twenty years of silence: division (E) requires the surface owner to serve notice and record an affidavit of abandonment first, and division (H) gives the holder sixty days to stop it. Note the closing words of division (H)(2), that abandonment and vesting are effective only as to the property of the owner who filed the affidavit, so one surface owner's success does not extinguish the interest under a neighbour's land.

SDCL 43-30A-2, Abandonment by nonuse--Title vests in surface owner

A South Dakota mineral interest is abandoned if it has not been used for twenty-three years or more, and title to it vests in the owner of the surface estate on the date of abandonment. No judge is required for that to happen. Seven things count as use: production by or with the express permission of the record owner; operations for injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal of water, gas or other fluid substances to produce or enhance production; production from a common vein or seam for solid minerals; the recording within the last twenty-three years of any valid conveyance, lease, mortgage, assignment, probate distribution, termination of joint tenancy affidavit, termination of life estate affidavit, transfer on death deed, judgment or decree making specific reference to the record owner's mineral interest; being subject to an agreement to pool or unitize; recording a statement of claim; or a proper instrument recorded before an affidavit recorded under the older marketable title chapter. The mineral interest defined for this purpose is a broad one, naming oil, gas, coal, clay, gravel and uranium and then reaching all other minerals of any kind and nature. Interests owned by a governmental body are exempt, the chapter applies both prospectively and retrospectively, and its provisions may not be waived until the twenty-three years have run.

Checked August 4, 2026. Chapter 43-30A read end to end on 2026-08-04, all twelve section numbers including the repealed ones. The twenty-three year figure is the current one: the section was enacted by SL 1985, ch 338, § 2 and amended by SL 2016, ch 215, § 1.

29 V.S.A. § 563, Abandonment of oil and gas interests; preservation

An abandoned interest in oil and gas reverts to and merges with the surface estate from which it was severed. An interest is deemed abandoned at any time that it has been unused for a continuous period of ten years after 1 July 1973 AND no statement of interest has been filed at any time within the preceding five years. So there are two conditions and both must be met: ten years of non use is not enough on its own if a statement was filed in the last five, and a statement filed six years ago does not help an interest that has been idle for a decade. Five things count as use: actual production of oil or gas, including from lands covered by a lease the interest is subject to or from lands pooled or unitized with them; oil and gas operations conducted under the terms of the instrument that created the interest; payment of rental or royalties to delay or continue the use; payment of taxes on the oil and gas interest; and the existence of a currently valid Act 250 permit or drilling permit for development of the interest. The owner who ORIGINALLY SEVERED the mineral estate from the surface is outside the section entirely, and stays outside it even though the surface and other interests have since been sold, leased or mortgaged away. The section applies to all interests in oil and gas, and to interests in other minerals only where those were created inclusively in the same instrument that expressly creates an oil and gas interest; it does not reach a mineral interest that does not expressly include oil and gas or that was intended to be separate from one. The surface owner gives notice of abandonment by publishing it in a newspaper of general circulation in the town where the land lies, and mailing a copy by certified or registered mail within ten days of publication if the owner's address is shown on record. Filing the notice with an affidavit in the land records then makes the interest presumed abandoned unless a court finds to the contrary.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 29 V.S.A. § 563 on 2026-08-03. Added by 2023, No. 161 (Adj. Sess.), § 36, effective 6 June 2024, which makes it THE NEWEST DORMANT MINERAL STATUTE ON THIS RECORD by more than a decade, and it was enacted into a chapter whose every subchapter had been repealed the previous year. Four features separate it from the fourteen other lapse regimes here. FIRST, the preservation filing is not a one-off. Nearly every notice-to-preserve on this record is filed once and either lasts for a fixed long period or restarts a clock; Vermont's condition is that a statement of interest has been filed WITHIN THE PRECEDING FIVE YEARS, which on its face makes preservation a recurring five-year duty rather than a single act. Set that against the same state's marketable record title act, where a notice of claim lasts forty years from filing, and Vermont is a state that asks a mineral owner to file twice on two entirely different cycles. SECOND, the destination is a merger: the interest reverts to AND MERGES WITH the surface estate, which is Wisconsin's language rather than Michigan's vesting or Minnesota's forfeiture to the State. THIRD, the exemption in subsection (c) for the owner who originally severed the estate has no analogue found here, and it inverts the usual assumption that the oldest severances are the most exposed: in Vermont the original severor's own interest is safe forever and it is the assignees and heirs who are on the clock. FOURTH, the scope rule in subsection (d) is the narrowest of the substance-limited acts on this record and it is limited by INSTRUMENT rather than by substance. Michigan's 1963 act reaches oil and gas; Iowa's reaches coal; Vermont's reaches oil and gas and then reaches other minerals only where they were carved out in the same instrument that expressly created the oil and gas interest, so whether a Vermont hard-rock interest is exposed depends on what else the deed that created it happened to say. A DRAFTING DEFECT IS RECORDED HERE AND NOT RESOLVED. Subsection (b)(2) requires a statement of interest 'under subsection (e) of this section'. Subsection (e) is the list of what counts as use. The statement of interest is created by subsection (f). The cross-reference does not match the section it points at, this record makes no claim about what a Vermont court would do with that, and it is stated because a mineral owner relying on the section should know it is there. WHAT IS NOT READ: nothing read gives the owner of a published-against interest any period in which to answer the notice, and no such window should be inferred from the absence; no Vermont decision on this section was fetched, and there may not yet be one; and the effect of the merger on a lease of the interest was not established.

RCW 78.22.010, Extinguishment of unused mineral rights authorized

Washington has a dormant mineral act and it is short and complete. Any mineral interest that has gone unused for twenty years may be extinguished by the surface owner, who then acquires ownership of it, by following the notice and filing procedure the chapter sets out. What the act covers is drawn as widely as the drafting allows: a mineral interest is any interest, of any kind, in any subsurface mineral, however it was created, whether by grant, by assignment, by reservation or otherwise.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at RCW 78.22.010 and 78.22.020 in the Legislature's own RCW database on 2026-08-01, with the whole of chapter 78.22 read section by section the same day. The chapter is 1984 c 252 throughout and has not been amended since. Note what the operative sentence does not say: it does not vest the interest in anybody automatically and it sets no deadline for the surface owner to act. The interest becomes extinguishable, and stays extinguishable, until somebody does the work in 78.22.050. The definition in 78.22.020 is worth reading twice, because it reaches an interest of any kind rather than only a fee mineral estate.

Wis. Stat. s. 706.057, Lapse and reversion of interests in minerals

Wisconsin's lapse statute applies only where the minerals and the surface are in different hands, and it says plainly that an interest in minerals lapses if it was not used during the previous twenty years. Five things count as use: minerals mined in exploitation of the interest, a recorded conveyance of mineral interests, any other recorded conveyance by which the interest is created, transferred, reserved, mortgaged or assigned, property taxes paid on the interest by its own owner, and a recorded statement of claim. Two transitional paragraphs deal with interests that were already idle when the section took effect on 1 July 1984 by giving them three years to be used.

Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Wis. Stat. s. 706.057(1), (2) and (3) on 2026-08-01 in the Legislature's own statutes database. Two limits on what this reaches, and they pull in opposite directions. It is NOT limited to metalliferous minerals: the section runs on interest in minerals, and s. 706.01(8m) defines mineral as a naturally occurring substance recognised by standard authorities as mineral, whether metalliferous or nonmetalliferous. But s. 706.01(7m) requires a FEE SIMPLE interest separate from the surface fee, so a severed royalty, a lease or a term interest is not an interest in minerals for this purpose and nothing was read about what happens to those. Washington's dormant act answers the same drafting question the opposite way, reaching an interest of any kind in any subsurface mineral.