Do mineral rights expire?
Checked August 1, 2026 Updated August 1, 2026 171 sources read
Aug 1 2026
The short answer
Whether a mineral interest can be lost by leaving it alone depends entirely on which state it sits in, and this is one of the few questions in mineral law where the answer genuinely flips. Some states have no statute that could do it. Others have a statute that can end a severed interest its owner has left alone, and who is holding it afterwards is something each of those statutes decides for itself rather than a national rule: the surface owner in most of them, but not in all. And Louisiana needs no statute of that kind at all, because a Louisiana mineral right is temporary by its nature and prescribes for nonuse at ten years.
Fifty states have been read for this record: twenty where nothing read can move the interest at all, twelve where leaving it alone is enough to lose it, eighteen where it can be lost but something more than inaction has to happen. Where leaving it alone is enough on its own the states are Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, and what the owner has to do is not the same in any two of them. In Indiana: Use it or record a claim, or it ends automatically at twenty years. In Iowa: For COAL, file a statement of claim with the county recorder every twenty years, counted from the instrument rather than from anything you did, unless the interest was separately taxed after 1 July 1971, in which case the chapter does not apply to you at all. For every other mineral nothing lapses, but keep the separate tax bill paid: an interest sold at tax sale can be redeemed out from under you by the surface owner after ninety days. In Kansas: Use it or record a statement of claim within twenty years, and paying the tax on the interest counts as using it. Miss it and you still have sixty days from finding out. In Louisiana: Go and look for minerals. A mineral servitude or royalty prescribes for nonuse at ten years, by operation of law, and only real operations or production interrupt it. In Michigan: Use it or record a claim. Nobody has to warn you first. In Nebraska: Record a dealing, produce, use the pore space, or record a verified claim, every twenty-three years. Paying the tax does not count. In North Dakota: Use it or record a statement of claim, normally before the twenty years run out. In Ohio: Use it, or answer the notice within sixty days. In South Dakota: Use it or record a statement of claim before the twenty-three years run out, and keep an address on file at the register of deeds in the county where the interest is. That second one is not housekeeping: the statute makes maintaining an address the mineral owner’s own obligation and treats failing to do it as a waiver of the right to be posted the notice that the interest is lapsing. If notice is published anyway you have sixty days from the end of publication to record a claim. Do not rely on a 43-30B trust: a court can appoint the county treasurer to lease your minerals and hold the money for you, and the statute says in terms that none of that counts as using the interest. In Vermont: File twice, on two different clocks, because Vermont can take the interest two ways and neither statute mentions the other. For oil and gas, keep a statement of interest on file in the town land records from within the last FIVE years, or use the interest: production, operations under the creating instrument, delay rentals or royalties, paying the tax on the interest, or a live Act 250 or drilling permit all count. Ten years unused with no current statement makes it abandoned, and the surface owner then publishes a notice and files an affidavit. Separately, the forty year marketable record title act has no mineral exception, so if the surface chain has run forty years clean, record a verified notice of claim inside that period; it then lasts forty years. If you are the original severor, 563 does not reach you at all. In Washington: Use it or file a statement of claim with the county auditor, and paying the tax on the interest counts, as does recording a mortgage or transfer of it. If a notice of intention arrives you have sixty days, and by then the county treasurer will have given the surface owner your address off the tax roll for nothing. In Wisconsin: Record a statement of claim, and you can do it at any time, even decades after the interest lapsed, so long as the surface owner has not recorded a claim to it first. Paying the property tax on the interest counts as use as well. If the surface owner does get there first you still have three years to take the question to the circuit court, and only then does the interest revert and merge into the surface title. The table below gives each state's own rule with the date it was checked.
Checked against the sources named below on .
Can mineral rights be lost by not using them?
In some states yes, in others there is no statute that could do it, so the only useful answer names the state. Two statutes decide it. The first is a dormant mineral act: it sets a period of non use and then ends the unused interest, usually but not always after a notice somebody has to serve, and usually but not always putting it in the hands of the surface owner. The second is a marketable record title act, which cures title by wiping out claims older than a root of title some decades back, and which may or may not except minerals from that cure. Fifty states have been read for this record: twenty where nothing read can move the interest at all, twelve where leaving it alone is enough to lose it, eighteen where it can be lost but something more than inaction has to happen. The rules below give each state its own answer and its own source. Where an interest can be lapsed, look for a fixed period of inactivity and for the list of events that reset it, then look separately at what warning the holder gets, because that is where these statutes differ most. Do not assume the reset list contains what you are doing with the minerals. It usually does, naming production, an active lease, a recorded transfer and sometimes a tax payment, but Oregon's does not: ORS 517.180 names two events, a statement of claim recorded in the last thirty years and acquisition within the last thirty, and nothing about use appears in it at all. On this record the states where leaving it alone is enough on its own are Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, and what the owner has to do is not the same in any two of them. In Indiana: Use it or record a claim, or it ends automatically at twenty years. In Iowa: For COAL, file a statement of claim with the county recorder every twenty years, counted from the instrument rather than from anything you did, unless the interest was separately taxed after 1 July 1971, in which case the chapter does not apply to you at all. For every other mineral nothing lapses, but keep the separate tax bill paid: an interest sold at tax sale can be redeemed out from under you by the surface owner after ninety days. In Kansas: Use it or record a statement of claim within twenty years, and paying the tax on the interest counts as using it. Miss it and you still have sixty days from finding out. In Louisiana: Go and look for minerals. A mineral servitude or royalty prescribes for nonuse at ten years, by operation of law, and only real operations or production interrupt it. In Michigan: Use it or record a claim. Nobody has to warn you first. In Nebraska: Record a dealing, produce, use the pore space, or record a verified claim, every twenty-three years. Paying the tax does not count. In North Dakota: Use it or record a statement of claim, normally before the twenty years run out. In Ohio: Use it, or answer the notice within sixty days. In South Dakota: Use it or record a statement of claim before the twenty-three years run out, and keep an address on file at the register of deeds in the county where the interest is. That second one is not housekeeping: the statute makes maintaining an address the mineral owner’s own obligation and treats failing to do it as a waiver of the right to be posted the notice that the interest is lapsing. If notice is published anyway you have sixty days from the end of publication to record a claim. Do not rely on a 43-30B trust: a court can appoint the county treasurer to lease your minerals and hold the money for you, and the statute says in terms that none of that counts as using the interest. In Vermont: File twice, on two different clocks, because Vermont can take the interest two ways and neither statute mentions the other. For oil and gas, keep a statement of interest on file in the town land records from within the last FIVE years, or use the interest: production, operations under the creating instrument, delay rentals or royalties, paying the tax on the interest, or a live Act 250 or drilling permit all count. Ten years unused with no current statement makes it abandoned, and the surface owner then publishes a notice and files an affidavit. Separately, the forty year marketable record title act has no mineral exception, so if the surface chain has run forty years clean, record a verified notice of claim inside that period; it then lasts forty years. If you are the original severor, 563 does not reach you at all. In Washington: Use it or file a statement of claim with the county auditor, and paying the tax on the interest counts, as does recording a mortgage or transfer of it. If a notice of intention arrives you have sixty days, and by then the county treasurer will have given the surface owner your address off the tax roll for nothing. In Wisconsin: Record a statement of claim, and you can do it at any time, even decades after the interest lapsed, so long as the surface owner has not recorded a claim to it first. Paying the property tax on the interest counts as use as well. If the surface owner does get there first you still have three years to take the question to the circuit court, and only then does the interest revert and merge into the surface title. A "no" is also not the end of the answer. In Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Virginia a court can appoint somebody to grant a lease on behalf of an owner who cannot be found, so an interest can be leased without its owner present. Where that road ends differs in every one of them, from money held indefinitely, to money handed to the state's unclaimed property regime, to the interest itself being conveyed to the surface owner, and the section on this page headed "Where a court can act for an owner nobody can find" sets each state's ending out separately rather than summarising them. Losing an interest can also take an event rather than inactivity: a conveyance, a tax sale, or an adverse possession claim against the minerals themselves. Possessing the surface is not possessing the minerals once the estate has been severed. This page cannot tell you the answer for the other no states, and it does not guess.
Checked against the sources named below on .
What a dormant mineral act actually does
The phrase is worth pinning down, because it is the whole question. A dormant mineral act is a state statute that takes a mineral interest nobody has used for some defined period and ends it, usually returning it to the surface owner. Where one exists it typically comes with machinery: a period measured in years, a notice of intent to preserve that a mineral owner can record to stop the clock, and a notice of lapse the surface owner records to claim the interest.
Whether your state has one of these is not a matter of general principle. It is a matter of what is written in that state's code, which is why this page is organised by state and why it only speaks for the states that have been read.
And an act of that kind is not the only way a mineral right ends. Louisiana has no dormant mineral act and does not need one. It is a civil law jurisdiction, its Mineral Code says that ownership of land does not include ownership of the oil and gas under it, and what a landowner creates instead is a mineral right that is temporary by its nature: a mineral servitude or a mineral royalty prescribes for nonuse at ten years, from the day it was created, by operation of law. Nothing is deemed abandoned, nothing vests in a surface owner, and there is nothing to file. So when the table below puts Louisiana beside the states with a dormant mineral act, it is grouping them by what happens to the owner and not by the machinery, and Louisiana's page explains why the machinery is not comparable.
What the record says, state by state
The table below is generated from the record rather than written by hand, so it says what has actually been read on the day you are reading it, and it grows when a state page does.
| State | What the code says | What you have to do to keep it | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | That one payment buys a permanent exemption, and a tax sale of the surface cannot touch the mineral interest | Nothing lapses, and for an interest severed after October 12, 1957 there is not even an annual tax to fall behind on. If it was severed before that date, check that an owner once applied to the probate judge for the exemption, because without that application it stays on the tax roll | July 31, 2026 |
| Alabama | There is no dormant mineral act in Alabama, and no marketable record title act either | July 31, 2026 | |
| Alaska | Nothing found in the mining, property or public land titles ends a mineral interest for non use | Nothing. Nothing read in the mining, property or public land titles can move the interest for inaction | July 31, 2026 |
| Arizona | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on two complete title indexes | Nothing. Neither the minerals title nor the property title contains a dormant mineral act or a marketable record title act, so there is no clock to restart, nothing to record, and no filing that would mean anything if you made it | August 1, 2026 |
| Arkansas | No dormant mineral act, and the twenty year forfeiture that comes closest says it does not reach minerals | Make sure the ad valorem taxes on the interest are paid and that you can show it, because Arkansas has no dormant mineral act and no statement of claim to file, and the only way an interest moves is adverse possession under Ark. Code 18-11-106, where somebody else holds colour of title and pays those taxes for seven years, or fifteen on wild and unimproved land, while the true owner does not | August 4, 2026 |
| California | A dormant mineral right can be ended, but the surface owner must sue and all three conditions must hold for twenty years | Record a notice of intent to preserve, which needs no legal description. Nothing happens unless the surface owner sues, three conditions have to hold together for twenty years, and even after the suit is filed the court must let you file late if you pay their costs | July 31, 2026 |
| California | The preserving notice needs no legal description, and the court must let it be filed even after the suit begins | July 31, 2026 | |
| California | The termination chapter does not reach a mineral right reserved to the United States, or one held by the state | July 31, 2026 | |
| Colorado | Colorado has no dormant mineral statute | Nothing. No statute read here can move the interest for inaction | July 25, 2026 |
| Connecticut | Twenty years unused and the surface owner may sue to terminate, on the same notice as a quiet title action, whether or not anybody knows where you are | Record a notice of intent to preserve, and know that Connecticut runs TWO clocks that do not substitute for each other. Twenty years of non use lets the fee owner sue to terminate under the Dormant Mineral Interests Act, and the suit can be brought whether or not anybody knows where you are; the cure is a notice under section 47-33r, or one of five uses, and paying tax on a separate assessment of the interest counts while injecting for disposal or storage does not. Separately the forty year marketable record title act has no mineral exception, and its notice is a different filing under section 47-33f. If you are sued you may still record a LATE notice and the court MUST permit it on your paying the plaintiff litigation expenses including a reasonable attorney fee, and unlike Maryland that rescue has no expiry date at all; but the plaintiff then has fifteen days to move to continue the case as an ordinary quiet title action, where the statute no longer protects you. Filing in advance is a much better position than filing late | August 3, 2026 |
| Connecticut | Sued under the act you may still record a late notice, the court must let you, and unlike Maryland that rescue has no expiry date | August 3, 2026 | |
| Connecticut | A forty year marketable record title act with no mineral exception, and the dormant act says in terms that it keeps running | August 3, 2026 | |
| Delaware | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on 1,310 chapter names and two conveyancing chapters read whole | Nothing, and Delaware is the plainest answer in its whole neighbourhood. There is no dormant mineral act, so no period of inactivity to survive and nothing to file that would preserve anything; and, unlike Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, there is no marketable record title act either, so a forty year record chain that never mentions your interest does not reach it. The only outside limit found is the general twenty years to make an entry into land, and even that gives a person who was an infant, mentally ill or imprisoned when the right accrued ten more years after the disability is removed. If you hold a lease of STATE land under the minerals chapter, the obligations there are contractual rather than dormancy: the royalty floor is twelve and a half percent of gross production and the State has a lien on production for arrears | August 3, 2026 |
| Florida | The Marketable Record Title Act never mentions minerals, which is why it reaches them | File a notice of preservation within thirty years of the root of title, and file it again every thirty years. Using the minerals is beside the point, and the act says your lack of knowledge of any kind does not delay or suspend the clock. Possession of the land, or any title transaction recorded after the root, will also hold it | August 1, 2026 |
| Florida | File a notice within thirty years of the root, and not knowing about it does not help you | August 1, 2026 | |
| Georgia | Seven years of neither working the minerals nor paying their taxes, and the surface owner can petition a court to take them | Do any ONE of three things and the claim fails, because the test is conjunctive: work the minerals, ATTEMPT to work them, or simply pay the ad valorem taxes on them. Seven years of all three absences is the shortest exposure on this record, but nothing happens to you in silence, because the surface owner has to file a petition in the superior court for the county and serve you as in an in rem proceeding, including by publication, so stay findable and watch the legal organ. Better still, get outside the statute altogether: it does not apply to a lease for a specific number of years, nor to an owner who has leased the minerals IN WRITING to a licensed mining operator | August 4, 2026 |
| Georgia | Paying the taxes is enough on its own, and a written lease to a licensed mining operator removes the section entirely | August 4, 2026 | |
| Hawaii | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on an enumeration of every chapter in the code | Nothing, and nothing you do will get them back either if they were never yours. No statute read here ends a Hawaii interest for inaction. The live question is whether your land is RESERVED LAND, meaning land in which the State or its predecessors reserved the minerals expressly or by implication, because if it is then the minerals were never in private hands to lapse. That is answered by tracing the instrument that first put the parcel in private hands, not by filing anything | August 2, 2026 |
| Idaho | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on an enumeration of both titles that would hold one | Nothing preserves it because nothing threatens it, so spend the attention on what you are owed instead. Every royalty payment must carry a check stub with eleven listed items including your decimal to eight places and an itemised list of every deduction, the lessee must keep the underlying records for five years and hand them over on request, and the prevailing party in a suit about it gets attorney fees. If you are force pooled and make no election you get a minimum one eighth royalty plus the highest per acre bonus the operator paid anybody else in your unit | August 3, 2026 |
| Illinois | A court leases for owners nobody can find, and after seven years conveys the interest to the surface owner whether or not anything was produced | Stay findable. Everything here turns on the owner being unknown or missing, and a surface owner can take the interest by statutory adverse possession in as little as a year | July 31, 2026 |
| Illinois | A surface owner can take a missing owner's minerals by statutory adverse possession, in as little as one year | July 31, 2026 | |
| Indiana | Twenty years unused and the interest is extinguished, with nobody having to do anything | Use it or record a claim, or it ends automatically at twenty years | July 31, 2026 |
| Indiana | Six things count as using an interest, and one is paying the tax on it | July 31, 2026 | |
| Iowa | A coal interest dies twenty years after it was created, and using it is beside the point | For COAL, file a statement of claim with the county recorder every twenty years, counted from the instrument rather than from anything you did, unless the interest was separately taxed after 1 July 1971, in which case the chapter does not apply to you at all. For every other mineral nothing lapses, but keep the separate tax bill paid: an interest sold at tax sale can be redeemed out from under you by the surface owner after ninety days | August 1, 2026 |
| Iowa | File a statement of claim, unless the interest was ever separately taxed after July 1971 | August 1, 2026 | |
| Iowa | A stranger to the coal cannot bring it back by reserving it in a later deed | August 1, 2026 | |
| Kansas | Twenty years unused and it reverts to the current surface owner, with six things counting as use | Use it or record a statement of claim within twenty years, and paying the tax on the interest counts as using it. Miss it and you still have sixty days from finding out | July 31, 2026 |
| Kansas | File a statement of claim, and if you miss it you still have sixty days from the day you find out | July 31, 2026 | |
| Kentucky | After seven years of production with the owners still missing, the court gives the minerals to the surface owner | Stay findable. A court can lease for a missing owner, and after seven years of production convey the interest to the surface owner | July 31, 2026 |
| Louisiana | Ten years of nonuse and the servitude is gone, with nobody having to do anything | Go and look for minerals. A mineral servitude or royalty prescribes for nonuse at ten years, by operation of law, and only real operations or production interrupt it | July 31, 2026 |
| Louisiana | A mineral royalty prescribes on the same ten years, and the royalty owner cannot make it happen | July 31, 2026 | |
| Maine | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on the title names and on every chapter of the Property title | Nothing preserves it, because no statute read here can take it for inaction, and the only outside limit found is the general twenty years to bring a real action. One thing changed in 2025 and is worth watching rather than acting on: the mining excise tax was rewritten to a flat five per cent of gross proceeds and the property tax exemption that used to accompany it was repealed, and what that means for a separately held mineral interest was not established | August 3, 2026 |
| Maryland | Twenty years unused with nothing recorded, and a surface owner can sue to terminate the interest | Record a notice of intent to preserve, and know which side of forty years you are on. At twenty years unused with nothing recorded a surface owner can sue to terminate, but the court MUST let you file a late notice as the price of dismissal if you pay their litigation expenses. At forty years that rescue is gone. A general reference to all your mineral interests in the county is enough for the notice, so one filing covers scattered fractions. Separately, stay findable: a court can trust a missing mineral owner interest, lease it to the surface owner, and convey it to them after five uncontested years | August 3, 2026 |
| Maryland | Production, a recording, a judgment or a tax payment all count as use, and injecting for storage does not | August 3, 2026 | |
| Maryland | Record a notice at any time, and even after you are sued you can file late, until the fortieth year | August 3, 2026 | |
| Maryland | A court can put a missing owner's interest in trust, lease it to the surface owner, and convey it away after five years | August 3, 2026 | |
| Massachusetts | A judgment of registration binds the land against all persons, including anybody reached only by the words to all whom it may concern | Find out whether the land is REGISTERED land, because that is the whole question in this state. Nothing lapses for non use: there is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act. What can move the interest is somebody else registering the land in the Land Court, because a judgment of registration binds the land against every person, including one reached only by the words to all whom it may concern, cannot be opened for absence, infancy or disability, and leaves the registered owner holding free of everything except what is noted on the certificate and seven survivals that do not include minerals. If a registration is under way, appear in it and get the interest noted on the certificate, and once it is noted no possession can ever take it. On land already registered, register the instrument, because an unregistered deed of registered land conveys nothing whatever. NO MASSACHUSETTS DECISION WAS READ for this record, so that is what the statute says rather than what a court has held | August 3, 2026 |
| Massachusetts | A registered owner holds free of every encumbrance except those noted on the certificate and seven survivals, and minerals are not one of the seven | August 3, 2026 | |
| Massachusetts | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, and the thirty year rule people will point at reaches restrictions on use rather than ownership | August 3, 2026 | |
| Michigan | Twenty years of silence and it vests in the surface owner, with no warning | Use it or record a claim. Nobody has to warn you first | July 30, 2026 |
| Michigan | A recorded claim buys another twenty years, and can be repeated | July 30, 2026 | |
| Michigan | A dormant interest is not spared by tax foreclosure either | July 30, 2026 | |
| Minnesota | Every severed mineral owner has had to file a statement naming themselves since 1970 | File the verified statement naming yourself as the owner, which every severed mineral owner has had to record since 1970, and keep the 40 cents an acre tax paid. There is no clock to restart and using the interest is beside the point: an owner who never filed forfeits it to the state rather than to the surface owner, after a court proceeding, and is left with a claim for its fair market value | August 1, 2026 |
| Minnesota | An unfiled interest forfeits to the state, and no other state on this record does that | August 1, 2026 | |
| Minnesota | The state may lease the interest before the forfeiture is final, and must cite Texaco v. Short when it does | August 1, 2026 | |
| Minnesota | A forfeited owner can recover the interest's fair market value from the state | August 1, 2026 | |
| Minnesota | The defence is substantial compliance, and paying the tax is half of it | August 1, 2026 | |
| Minnesota | A statement filed on time survives its own errors | August 1, 2026 | |
| Mississippi | No dormant mineral act, and no statute anywhere that ends a mineral interest for non use | Nothing can be filed, because Mississippi has no dormant mineral act and no statement of claim to make, so the only thing that protects the interest is that no one else is in actual adverse possession of it: ten years of that vests a full and complete title in the occupant under Miss. Code 15-1-13, with no need for colour of title and no need for them to have paid a penny of tax | August 4, 2026 |
| Missouri | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on all 468 chapter titles in the code | Nothing preserves it, because no statute here can take it for inaction. What you can get wrong is letting somebody dig. Post a printed statement of your terms, conditions, requirements and duration in a conspicuous place in your office in the county, and give a copy to any miner who asks; anybody who digs after that is bound by your terms. Fail to post and a good faith digger gets an exclusive right to that working for three years with a right of way, at whatever royalty other miners pay on your land or on the nearest land in different hands. Keep the separate tax bill paid as well, because every severed Missouri interest must be assessed on its own | August 3, 2026 |
| Montana | Montana has no dormant mineral statute | Stay findable. Nothing lapses, but a court can appoint a trustee to lease for an owner it cannot find | July 30, 2026 |
| Nebraska | Twenty-three years, and three things that count as holding on | Record a dealing, produce, use the pore space, or record a verified claim, every twenty-three years. Paying the tax does not count | July 31, 2026 |
| Nebraska | Nothing happens until the surface owner sues in equity, and then the interest vests in the surface | July 31, 2026 | |
| Nevada | Nothing lapses for non use, and the whole conveyances chapter never uses the word mineral | Nothing lapses for non use, and nothing you file preserves an ordinary severed interest because no statute asks. If you hold a PATENTED mining claim, either record the annual affidavit showing a hundred dollars of development work, which keeps the surface off the tax roll, or pay the tax on it. A patented claim that falls to the county for unpaid taxes can be prospected by any citizen on a petition and deeded to them | August 1, 2026 |
| New Hampshire | No dormant mineral act, no marketable record title act, and no title of the statutes named for minerals at all | Nothing preserves it, because no statute read here can take it for inaction, and there is no mining title in the code at all. What New Hampshire does recognise is an EARTH EXCAVATION RIGHT, which a seller can retain or a stranger can buy, and the act attached to it is registration: a holder who has registered a claim with the registry of deeds is the owner for the excavation tax, at two cents a cubic yard, instead of the landowner. Retaining the right also retains that liability. Dimension stone is expressly outside all of it | August 3, 2026 |
| New Jersey | Nothing ends a New Jersey mineral interest for non use, and no statute read here even uses the word dormant | Nothing preserves it, because New Jersey asks you to file nothing: there is no dormant mineral act, no marketable title act and no root of title across 228 sections read end to end. The only thing that can take it is somebody else possessing it, and that takes THIRTY YEARS, or SIXTY on woodlands or uncultivated tracts, which is the kind of ground a severed mineral tract usually sits under. Watch the surface rather than the calendar | August 5, 2026 |
| New Mexico | New Mexico has no dormant mineral statute | Nothing. No statute read here can move the interest for inaction | July 30, 2026 |
| New York | Nothing found in the property laws or the mineral resources article ends an interest for non use | Nothing keeps it and nothing loses it. If a unit is formed around you, doing nothing makes you an integrated royalty owner: you take the lowest royalty in the unit, owe no costs, and cannot be sued over the well | July 31, 2026 |
| North Carolina | Nine separate statutes extinguished ancient severed mineral claims, and eight of the nine windows are shut | Almost certainly nothing you can still do, and that is the point. Nine statutes between 1965 and 1985 voided ancient severed mineral interests county by county unless a sworn notice was recorded inside a two year window, and the last of those windows shut on 1 January 1988. Using the minerals was never the question; what mattered was the record and whether the interest was listed for tax. Two things are still live: in Avery County the period is a rolling thirty years and a notice recorded inside it preserves the interest, and everywhere the interest carries its own ad valorem tax bill and can be foreclosed for its own arrears | August 2, 2026 |
| North Carolina | Which counties the extinguishment reached is not settled by the words, and the difference is a whole subsection | August 2, 2026 | |
| North Carolina | In Avery County alone the clock rolls, and it has never stopped | August 2, 2026 | |
| North Carolina | The marketable record title act saves minerals in five words, and never mentions them again | August 2, 2026 | |
| North Carolina | No dormant mineral act, and nothing running today can end an interest for simply not using it | August 2, 2026 | |
| North Dakota | Twenty years unused and the interest reverts to the surface owner | Use it or record a statement of claim, normally before the twenty years run out | July 30, 2026 |
| North Dakota | Six things count as using a mineral interest | July 30, 2026 | |
| North Dakota | Money paid into an account for an owner nobody can find is not use | July 30, 2026 | |
| North Dakota | The claim is due before the twenty years end, with a sixty day rescue after that | July 30, 2026 | |
| North Dakota | Notice is by newspaper, and the statute says how hard the surface owner must look | July 30, 2026 | |
| North Dakota | The surface owner can quiet title, and a lessee keeps what it paid even if that is undone | July 30, 2026 | |
| Ohio | A severed mineral interest can be deemed abandoned and vested in the surface owner | Use it, or answer the notice within sixty days | July 30, 2026 |
| Ohio | Six things in the last twenty years stop an interest being abandoned | July 30, 2026 | |
| Ohio | One recorded claim preserves the interest, and it can be repeated forever | July 30, 2026 | |
| Ohio | The surface owner has to serve notice and record an affidavit, and the holder gets sixty days | July 30, 2026 | |
| Ohio | Coal is exempt from all of this, and everything else is not | July 30, 2026 | |
| Ohio | Nothing lapsed automatically, and the notice procedure governs old claims too | July 30, 2026 | |
| Ohio | Paying a delay rental does not preserve the interest | July 30, 2026 | |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma does have a marketable record title act | Nothing. The marketable title act expressly refuses to touch severed minerals | July 30, 2026 |
| Oklahoma | The act may not be applied to extinguish a severed mineral or royalty interest | July 30, 2026 | |
| Oregon | The dormant mineral act says its purpose is to increase the state's tax base | Record a statement of claim, and do not assume that using the minerals is a substitute. The landowner can extinguish your interest by publishing three weeks of notice unless you recorded a claim in the last thirty years or acquired the interest in the last thirty; production, a lease and paying the tax are all absent from that list. If a notice does appear you have sixty days from the last publication to file the claim. Separately, if you co-own a MINE, pay your share of the annual assessment work: ninety days after notice the county clerk can issue the other co-owners a certificate that operates as a deed from you | August 2, 2026 |
| Oregon | Thirty years, and the only two things that stop it are a recorded claim and a recent acquisition | August 2, 2026 | |
| Oregon | Three weeks of newspaper notice, a mailing if you can be found, and sixty days to answer | August 2, 2026 | |
| Oregon | Miss your share of the assessment work on a mine and the county clerk deeds your interest away | August 2, 2026 | |
| Pennsylvania | The Dormant Oil and Gas Act says in terms that it does not give the minerals to the surface owner | Stay findable. Nothing lapses, but a court can appoint a bank to lease for an owner it cannot find | July 30, 2026 |
| Rhode Island | A forty year marketable record title act with no mineral exception, and it is Connecticut's act adopted twenty-eight years later | Record a notice of claim within the forty year period, and do not assume that using the minerals protects you, because it does not: the trigger is the record chain and not what anybody did with the ground. Rhode Island has no dormant mineral act at all, so nothing lapses for inaction as such, but its marketable record title act has no mineral exception, and an interest whose existence depends on anything before a forty year root of title is declared null and void, expressly including a claim asserted by a person under a disability or one outside the state. Connecticut, which took the same act nearly word for word, ALSO has a dormant mineral act; Rhode Island took one and not the other, so the forty year record chain is the whole of the exposure here | August 3, 2026 |
| South Carolina | No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on the title names and on both titles that would hold one | Nothing preserves it, because no statute read here can take it for inaction. What is worth doing is clearing your title rather than defending it. If an oil or gas lease of record has lapsed, send the lessee a written demand to cancel it: thirty days later they are liable for your attorney fee in suing to have the forfeiture adjudged and for all damages from your being unable to lease to anybody else meanwhile, and the section applies to leases signed before it existed. Nothing happens until you send the demand | August 3, 2026 |
| South Dakota | Twenty-three years unused and title vests in the surface owner on the date of abandonment, with no court involved | Use it or record a statement of claim before the twenty-three years run out, and keep an address on file at the register of deeds in the county where the interest is. That second one is not housekeeping: the statute makes maintaining an address the mineral owner’s own obligation and treats failing to do it as a waiver of the right to be posted the notice that the interest is lapsing. If notice is published anyway you have sixty days from the end of publication to record a claim. Do not rely on a 43-30B trust: a court can appoint the county treasurer to lease your minerals and hold the money for you, and the statute says in terms that none of that counts as using the interest | August 4, 2026 |
| South Dakota | Keeping an address on file is the mineral owner's job, and not keeping one waives the right to be told the interest is lapsing | August 4, 2026 | |
| South Dakota | A statement of claim filed within sixty days of the end of publication still saves the interest | August 4, 2026 | |
| South Dakota | A court can put an unlocatable owner's minerals in trust with the county treasurer and lease them out, and the statute says that is not use | August 4, 2026 | |
| South Dakota | A second and older clock, a 1947 marketable title act that never says the word mineral and turns on possession | August 4, 2026 | |
| Tennessee | Twenty years unused and the interest is extinguished, unless a statement of claim was filed first | Register the interest with the county PROPERTY ASSESSOR, giving a deed reference number and the tax map and parcel numbers of the surface above it, because until you do, paying the taxes does not count as use no matter how long you have paid them. Then either keep one of the five statutory uses alive, and note that production on a tract your interest is pooled with counts as yours, or file a statement of claim with the register of deeds before the twenty years run. If a complaint is filed against you, an answer alleging a claim within sixty days of the published notice stops the summary route | August 4, 2026 |
| Tennessee | Nothing lapses on its own: it takes a chancery complaint, three weeks of published notice and a chancellor's signature | August 4, 2026 | |
| Tennessee | Paying the taxes stops the clock only if you registered the interest with the county assessor first | August 4, 2026 | |
| Texas | Texas has no dormant mineral statute | Nothing. No statute read here can move the interest for inaction | July 30, 2026 |
| Utah | Utah has a marketable title act that wipes out old interests after forty years, and it expressly cannot touch minerals | Nothing. Utah has a marketable title act that voids claims older than a forty year root of title, with no notice to anybody, and it expressly may not be applied to minerals | July 31, 2026 |
| Utah | Beyond that exception, nothing read in the mining title or the property title ends an interest for non use | July 31, 2026 | |
| Vermont | A dormant oil and gas act enacted in 2024, ten years of non use plus a statement of interest that has to be refiled every five | File twice, on two different clocks, because Vermont can take the interest two ways and neither statute mentions the other. For oil and gas, keep a statement of interest on file in the town land records from within the last FIVE years, or use the interest: production, operations under the creating instrument, delay rentals or royalties, paying the tax on the interest, or a live Act 250 or drilling permit all count. Ten years unused with no current statement makes it abandoned, and the surface owner then publishes a notice and files an affidavit. Separately, the forty year marketable record title act has no mineral exception, so if the surface chain has run forty years clean, record a verified notice of claim inside that period; it then lasts forty years. If you are the original severor, 563 does not reach you at all | August 3, 2026 |
| Vermont | A forty year marketable record title act whose eight exceptions were read one by one, and none of them is minerals | August 3, 2026 | |
| Virginia | After 35 years the law presumes the minerals were never there, except in the coalfields | Stay findable, and defend the claim if you are sued. A court can lease for a missing coal owner and the money escheats after five years, and two thirds of the coal can have a court lease your share even when you are not missing | July 31, 2026 |
| Virginia | The landowner sues, the claimant gets six months to find something, and then the claim goes | July 31, 2026 | |
| Virginia | A court can lease for coal owners nobody can find, and after five years the money goes to unclaimed property | July 31, 2026 | |
| Virginia | Two thirds of the coal can have a court lease a known minority owner's share, with the money escrowed | July 31, 2026 | |
| Washington | A mineral interest unused for twenty years can be extinguished by the surface owner | Use it or file a statement of claim with the county auditor, and paying the tax on the interest counts, as does recording a mortgage or transfer of it. If a notice of intention arrives you have sixty days, and by then the county treasurer will have given the surface owner your address off the tax roll for nothing | August 1, 2026 |
| Washington | Nine acts count as use, including paying the tax and recording a transfer | August 1, 2026 | |
| Washington | Sixty days notice, and the county treasurer must give the surface owner your address for nothing | August 1, 2026 | |
| Washington | Filing the claim conclusively extinguishes the interest, and a dormant mineral index records who filed what | August 1, 2026 | |
| Washington | Public mineral interests are exempt, and nobody can be made to sign the protection away | August 1, 2026 | |
| West Virginia | West Virginia has no dormant mineral statute | Nothing keeps it, but nothing loses it either: a three-quarters majority can develop without you and you take statutory compensation | July 31, 2026 |
| Wisconsin | A severed mineral interest lapses if it was not used in the previous twenty years | Record a statement of claim, and you can do it at any time, even decades after the interest lapsed, so long as the surface owner has not recorded a claim to it first. Paying the property tax on the interest counts as use as well. If the surface owner does get there first you still have three years to take the question to the circuit court, and only then does the interest revert and merge into the surface title | August 1, 2026 |
| Wisconsin | The lapse can be cured at any time, until the surface owner records first | August 1, 2026 | |
| Wisconsin | Three years to sue after the surface owner claims, and then the interest merges into the surface | August 1, 2026 | |
| Wisconsin | Any waiver of the lapse section is void, without qualification | August 1, 2026 | |
| Wyoming | Nothing found in the mineral title or the property title ends a mineral interest for non use | Nothing. Nothing read in the mineral title or the property title can move the interest for inaction | July 31, 2026 |
That one payment buys a permanent exemption, and a tax sale of the surface cannot touch the mineral interest
verifiedThe mineral documentary tax is declared to be in lieu of all ad valorem taxes on all nonproducing leasehold interests in oil, gas and other minerals created or assigned after October 12, 1957, and all nonproducing interests in those minerals, including royalty interests, thereafter conveyed to a grantee or excepted or reserved to a grantor separately and apart from the surface, are exempt from all ad valorem taxes levied by the state, a county, a municipality, a school district or any other taxing district. The section then adds that any sale for taxes of the surface, or of the remainder of the fee, does not in any manner whatsoever affect the interests exempted. Interests created BEFORE October 12, 1957 and owned separately from the surface are exempted on the same footing, but only on a condition: the owner must have applied to the probate judge of the county where the land lies, on an application giving the name and address of the applicant, the description and acreage, the fractional interest and its nature, the recording data for the instrument that created it, the length of the primary term, the number of mineral, royalty or lease acres claimed and the amount tendered, and must have paid a sum equivalent to the tax. Where such a sum is paid after October 1, 1957, the exemption applies only to taxes becoming a lien after it was paid.
Any sale for taxes of the surface or of the remainder of the fee shall not in any manner whatsoever affect the interest or interests hereby exempted.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 40-20-35 and 40-20-36. This is the sentence to carry away from the Alabama page, because in several states on this record the ordinary way an old severed interest quietly dies is that nobody pays a small annual tax on it and it is sold. Alabama has closed that route for interests severed after October 12, 1957 by taking them off the roll altogether. But read the second half of section 40-20-35 rather than the first, because the exemption for OLDER interests is not automatic: it is a condition precedent that an owner once applied and paid, and Alabama coal and mineral severances are frequently much older than 1957. Where nobody ever filed that application, the interest stays assessable, section 40-7-16 says it is returned separately for assessment, and section 40-10-1 lets a probate court order a sale of land for taxes assessed against any mineral right in it. So the question an Alabama owner of a pre-1957 interest should ask is not whether a dormant mineral act exists, because none does, but whether the application in section 40-20-36 was ever made. WHAT IS NOT READ: the tax sale machinery in title 40 chapter 10 beyond section 40-10-1, including notice to a separately assessed mineral owner and the redemption provisions at 40-10-120 and following; and whether counties in practice assess unexempted pre-1957 interests at all.
There is no dormant mineral act in Alabama, and no marketable record title act either
verifiedNothing read for this record lapses, extinguishes or reverts a severed Alabama mineral interest for non use. Alabama has no dormant mineral interest statute. It also has no marketable record title act, which is the other statute that quietly ends old mineral claims in the states that have one. There is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim or notice of intent to preserve that a mineral owner must file to stay alive, and no notice of lapse for a surface owner to record. The title governing property runs from general provisions through conveyances, partition, landlord and tenant, mortgages, liens, lost or unclaimed property and conservation easements, and contains no chapter on dormant minerals or on marketable title.
The following actions must be commenced within 10 years: ... (2) Actions for the recovery of lands, tenements or hereditaments, or the possession thereof, except as otherwise provided in this article.
Checked July 31, 2026. THE INSTRUMENT BEHIND THIS NEGATIVE, so a reader can repeat it. The Alabama Legislature's site is a JavaScript application and a plain fetch of a section address returns the shell with no statute text in it, which reads like a dead source and is not. Behind it is a GraphQL endpoint the site uses itself, and one of its own operations returns every section under a chosen node in a single response. Every section HEADING in title 6, civil practice, in title 9, conservation and natural resources, and in title 35, property, was enumerated that way: 911, 1,326 and 848 headings, 3,085 in all, read on 2026-07-31. Not one is a dormant mineral act and not one is a marketable record title act. Every heading in those three titles containing "dormant", "abandon", "lapse", "forfeit", "revert", "extinguish" or "marketable" was then read to see what it was: abandoned property reported to the state, abandoned mine reclamation funds, lapsed OPTIONAL oil and gas leases being marked cancelled of record, forfeiture of hunting and fishing gear, and uncontrolled fires being extinguished. A WARNING ABOUT THE SITE'S OWN SEARCH, because it is a trap. The full text search on the Code of Alabama scores words rather than phrases: a search for "marketable record title" returns 8,104 sections, of which the top result is about the inspection of records by enforcement officers. It can find things and it can never establish that something is absent, which is why the enumeration above is what this negative rests on. WHAT THIS CANNOT EXCLUDE: a provision in a title that was not enumerated, adverse possession, which in Alabama runs on a ten year limitation for the recovery of land and on judge-made prescription this record did not read, and any Alabama decision, since nothing was fetched from a court.
Nothing found in the mining, property or public land titles ends a mineral interest for non use
verifiedNothing read for this record lapses, extinguishes or reverts an Alaska mineral interest for non use. There is no dormant mineral act among the sections of the mining title, the property title or the public land title. There is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim or notice of intent to preserve to record, and no notice of lapse for a surface owner to file. Alaska legislates instead about the reservation that created the split in the first place: what the state kept, what it must pay before exercising it, and what a mining operator may do with the surface.
Surface uses of land or water included within a mining property by the owners, lessees, or operators shall be limited to those necessary for the prospecting for, extraction of, or basic processing of minerals and shall be subject to reasonable concurrent uses.
Checked July 31, 2026. THE INSTRUMENT BEHIND THIS NEGATIVE, so a reader can repeat it. The Legislature's statute site will return any range of sections as one plain document. Three whole titles were fetched that way, the mining title, the property title and the public land title, and every section heading in all three was enumerated: 135, 554 and 334, making 1,023 headings. The word "dormant" appears in none of those headings and in none of the three full texts, not once. "Lapse" appears in no heading. Every heading containing "abandon", "forfeit", "revert" or "extinguish" was then read to see what it was about, and none is a mineral dormancy provision: they are the surface coal mining reclamation act, the unclaimed property act, the landlord and tenant act, association assessment liens, attorney liens, trust transfers, and forfeiture of a state lease or a right-of-way. The controls confirm the enumeration works rather than silently matching nothing. WHAT THIS CANNOT EXCLUDE: a provision in a title that was not read, and any judge-made doctrine, since nothing was fetched from an Alaska court. The quote attached to this rule is from the surface use section rather than anything about dormancy, because there is no provision to quote; it is here so the rule carries verbatim text from a source actually read, and the substance of the negative is the enumeration described above.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on two complete title indexes
verifiedA.R.S. Title 27, Minerals, Oil and Gas, complete index of chapters, articles and sections
Nothing read here can end an Arizona mineral interest because its owner did nothing with it. The two statutory titles where such a provision would live were each enumerated in full. The minerals, oil and gas title contains no occurrence of dormant, lapse or marketable across its complete index of chapters, articles and section headings. The property title, across twenty four chapters, contains no occurrence of dormant, mineral, marketable, root of title or lapse. So an Arizona severed mineral interest has no clock to run out, nothing its owner must record to stay alive, and no notice anybody has to answer.
Checked August 1, 2026. Both title indexes were fetched from the Legislature's own site and counted on 2026-08-01: Title 27, Minerals, Oil and Gas, 25,024 characters, and Title 33, Property, 44,097 characters and 24 chapters. The counts are dormant 0, lapse 0 and marketable 0 in Title 27, and dormant 0, mineral 0, marketable 0, root of title 0 and lapse 0 in Title 33. Each instrument was validated against controls that do appear, so a zero means absence rather than a broken fetch: Title 27 returns royalty 5, surface 8, abandon 4 and pooling 2, and Title 33 returns abandon 5 across its 24 chapters. BE PRECISE ABOUT WHAT THIS ESTABLISHES. It is a heading-level enumeration of two titles. It cannot exclude a provision buried inside a section whose heading says something else, and no Arizona decision was read. It is the same instrument Alabama's dormancy negative rests on and it carries the same limit.
No dormant mineral act, and the twenty year forfeiture that comes closest says it does not reach minerals
verifiedArk. Code Ann. § 18-11-105(d)(1)
Arkansas has no dormant mineral interests act. Chapter 11 of Title 18 was walked end to end, fifty-four sections across eight subchapters, and the word mineral appears in it exactly six times, every one of them a carve-out rather than a rule. The provision that comes closest is Ark. Code 18-11-105, and it is worth knowing precisely because it looks like the thing an absent mineral owner should fear. It provides that all right, claim, title, interest, equity and estate of a cotenant or tenant-in-common to SURFACE RIGHTS which they are not possessing, where the interest was created by intestate descent and distribution or by testate distribution from their grantor, is conclusively deemed waived, abandoned and forfeited to the cotenant in possession, on two conditions: that the cotenant out of possession, whose whereabouts are unknown, has made no written demand for rents, profits or possession for twenty years, and that after those twenty years the cotenant in possession publishes notice of an intent to oust once a week for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county, then between ninety and three hundred and sixty-five days after the last publication brings an action to quiet title. That is a real forfeiture on a twenty year clock with a court at the end of it. And then subsection (d)(1) removes minerals from it in a single sentence. So an Arkansas mineral interest held by a tenant-in-common who has never been heard from is not reachable by the one mechanism the property chapter provides for exactly that situation. The other express carve-out is at 18-11-704, in the easement relocation subchapter, which forbids serving a summons and petition on the owner of a recorded oil, gas or mineral interest unless that interest includes an easement to facilitate development.
This section shall not apply to mineral rights or other subsurface rights held by cotenants or tenants-in-common.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from Ark. Code 18-11-105(d)(1) on the verbatim mirror, with the whole of chapter 11 of Title 18 walked through the mirror's own Previous and Next chain rather than enumerated from an index. The negative is stated on a chapter read end to end and on the statute's own words, not on a search: the six appearances of the word mineral in the chapter were each read in place. What was NOT read is Arkansas case law, and that limit is stated in the gaps on this page.
A dormant mineral right can be ended, but the surface owner must sue and all three conditions must hold for twenty years
verifiedThe owner of real property subject to a mineral right may bring an action to terminate the mineral right if it is dormant. A mineral right is dormant only if ALL of three conditions are satisfied for the twenty years immediately preceding the commencement of the action: there is no production of the minerals and no exploration, drilling, mining, development or other operations affecting them, whether on or below the surface of that property or on other property and whether or not unitized or pooled with it; no separate property tax assessment is made of the mineral right, or if one is made no taxes are paid on it; and no instrument creating, reserving, transferring or otherwise evidencing the mineral right is recorded. The action is brought in the superior court of the county where the property is, in the same manner and subject to the same procedure as a quiet title action so far as applicable. A mineral right terminated under the article is unenforceable and deemed to have expired, and the court order is equivalent for all purposes to a conveyance of the mineral right to the owner of the real property. The article applies to all mineral rights whether executed or recorded before, on or after January 1, 1985.
For the purpose of this article, a mineral right is dormant if all of the following conditions are satisfied for a period of 20 years immediately preceding commencement of the action to terminate the mineral right
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 883.210, 883.220, 883.240, 883.260 and 883.270. Two things distinguish this from the other lapse statutes on this record and both make it harder to lose a California interest. The conditions are CONJUNCTIVE, so a mineral owner defeats the whole thing by satisfying any one of the three: producing, being separately assessed and paying the tax, or having any instrument evidencing the right recorded in the period. Michigan, Indiana and Kansas all run off a single list of qualifying uses where doing any one is enough to save you, which sounds similar but is not: there the surface owner needs only the absence of every listed use, here the surface owner needs the absence of all three categories at once, and the third is satisfied by a recording that nobody had to make for this purpose. And nothing happens automatically. Michigan vests the interest with no warning and Indiana extinguishes it on the clock alone; California requires the surface owner to file a quiet title action in the superior court and win it. What the order does when it comes is stated in unusually plain terms: it is equivalent for all purposes to a conveyance of the mineral right to the surface owner.
The preserving notice needs no legal description, and the court must let it be filed even after the suit begins
verifiedAn owner of a mineral right may at any time record a notice of intent to preserve it. In place of the statement of the character of the interest and the record location of the documents creating it, and in place of the legal description of the real property that the general marketable title provisions would otherwise require, a notice of intent to preserve a mineral right may refer generally and without specificity to any or all mineral rights the claimant claims in any real property situated in the county. A mineral right is not dormant if such a notice is recorded within the twenty years immediately preceding commencement of the action, or if one is recorded after the action has commenced under the late notice provision. In an action to terminate a mineral right the court SHALL permit the owner of the mineral right to record a late notice of intent to preserve it as a condition of dismissal of the action, on payment into court, for the benefit of the owner of the real property, of the litigation expenses attributable to the mineral right or the part of it the notice covers. Litigation expenses means recoverable costs and expenses reasonably and necessarily incurred in preparation for the action, including a reasonable attorney's fee.
In an action to terminate a mineral right pursuant to this article, the court shall permit the owner of the mineral right to record a late notice of intent to preserve the mineral right as a condition of dismissal of the action, upon payment into court for the benefit of the owner of the real property the litigation expenses attributable to the mineral right
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 883.230 and 883.250. Every lapse state on this record gives a mineral owner something to file, and the differences between them are all about WHEN it is too late. Ohio and North Dakota give sixty days from a notice. Kansas gives sixty days from a published notice or from receiving actual knowledge where nothing was published, which this record has called the most protective limb of any lapse statute here. California is later still and differently shaped: the mineral owner can file after the lawsuit has already been brought, the court has no discretion to refuse, and the price is the surface owner's reasonable costs and attorney's fees. That converts what is elsewhere a forfeiture into something closer to a bill. The other half is a quiet practical gift to owners of scattered fractional interests: the preserving notice may refer generally and without specificity to any or all mineral rights the claimant claims anywhere in the county, so an owner who does not know exactly what they hold, which is the usual condition of an inherited interest, can still preserve it. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 880.330, which sets the general contents of such a notice, and section 880.370, the recording grace period the article is expressly subject to.
The termination chapter does not reach a mineral right reserved to the United States, or one held by the state
verifiedThe chapter does not apply to a mineral right reserved to the United States, whether in a patent, pursuant to federal law, or otherwise, nor to an oil or gas lease, mining claim or other mineral right of a person entitled pursuant to such a reservation, to the extent the marketable title provisions provide. It also does not apply to a mineral right of the state or a local public entity, or of any other person, to that same extent. Separately, nothing in the chapter limits or affects the common law governing abandonment of a mineral right, or any other procedure provided by statute for clearing an abandoned mineral right from title to real property.
This chapter does not apply to a mineral right reserved to the United States (whether in a patent, pursuant to federal law, or otherwise) or to an oil or gas lease, mining claim, or other mineral right of a person entitled pursuant thereto, to the extent provided in Section 880.240.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 883.120 and 883.130, and both belong on the page for the same reason: they tell a reader what this chapter cannot do for them. The first is the connection between this page and the federal record on this site. A California surface owner whose minerals were reserved to the United States in the patent cannot use this article at all, and no amount of dormancy will change that, which is the same conclusion the federal reservations page reaches by a different route. The second matters because it stops the article being read as a complete code: the common law of abandonment survives it, and so does any other statutory clearing procedure. So the existence of this chapter is not authority that a dormant California mineral right can only be ended this way. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 880.240, which both exclusions are measured by, and the common law of abandonment itself, since nothing was fetched from a California court.
Colorado has no dormant mineral statute
verifiedC.R.S. §§ 38-42-101 to 38-42-106 (Article 42, Oil, gas, & mining leases)read from Public.Law, Colorado Revised Statutes, current through Fall 2025
Colorado has no dormant mineral interest act: no period of non-use lapses a severed mineral interest, and there is no notice of intent to preserve and no notice of lapse to record.
Checked July 25, 2026. Title 38, Article 42 was read section by section at colorado.public.law and is titled "Oil, gas, & mining leases" rather than severed mineral interests. It contains six sections and none is a dormancy or lapse provision: 38-42-101 lease with option to purchase, -102 option void when, -103 title form, -104 lease surrendered when, -105 actions for surrender of lease and damages, -106 record of lease no longer notice unless affidavit recorded. The nearest analogue is lease dormancy rather than mineral-interest dormancy: § 38-42-106 makes a recorded lease stop operating as notice unless an extension affidavit is recorded within six months after the primary term, for leases after March 28, 1967. No dormant mineral act was found in the CRS or in the legislature's bill records.
Twenty years unused and the surface owner may sue to terminate, on the same notice as a quiet title action, whether or not anybody knows where you are
verifiedC.G.S. § 47-33q, Dormant Mineral Interests Act: Termination of dormant mineral interest
The owner of the fee simple title to real property subject to a dormant mineral interest in anybody else may maintain an action to terminate it. An interest is dormant if it has been unused for a period of twenty years immediately preceding the commencement of the action. The action is brought in the manner of, and requires the same notice as, an action to quiet title, and may be maintained whether the owner of the mineral interest or the whereabouts of that owner is known or unknown. No disability or lack of knowledge of any kind on the part of any person suspends the running of the twenty year period. If the court finds the interest unused for twenty or more years preceding the action, it shall enter a decree declaring the dormant mineral interest extinguished and terminated. Five things count as use, taken by or under the authority of the mineral owner. Production, geophysical exploration, exploratory or developmental drilling, mining, exploitation, development or other active mineral operations on or below the surface, and such operations constitute use of any mineral interest owned by anybody in any mineral that is the object of them; but injection of substances for disposal or storage is expressly not an active mineral operation. Payment of taxes on a separate property tax assessment of the interest, or on a mineral transfer or severance tax relating to it. Recording an instrument that transfers, leases, conveys, assigns or divides the interest or creates a security interest or lien against it, including a probate certificate of distribution or devise. Recording a notice of intent to preserve. And recording a certified copy of a judgment or decree that makes specific reference to the mineral interest, provided it describes the fee estate, names all record owners of it, and is indexed by the town clerk in the grantor index under all their names. The statement of policy says the purpose is to enable and encourage marketability of real property and to mitigate the impact of dormant mineral interests on the full use and development of both the surface estate and the mineral interests.
A mineral interest is dormant for the purpose of sections 47-33m to 47-33t, inclusive, if the interest is unused within the meaning of subsection (c) of this section for a period of twenty years immediately preceding commencement of the action... No disability or lack of knowledge of any kind on the part of any person suspends the running of the twenty-year period.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at C.G.S. §§ 47-33m to 47-33q on 2026-08-03, all enacted by P.A. 87-283. CONNECTICUT IS THE SECOND STATE ON THIS RECORD WITH THE UNIFORM DORMANT MINERAL INTERESTS ACT AND IT IS TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AHEAD OF THE OTHER. Maryland adopted it effective 1 October 2011 and says so in its own text; Connecticut's took effect on 1 October 1987, with a two year moratorium before any action could be brought. The definitions confirm it is the same instrument rather than a similar one: MINERALS is the uniform list, reaching oil, gas, coal, other liquid, gaseous and solid hydrocarbons, oil shale, cement material, SAND AND GRAVEL, ROAD MATERIAL, BUILDING STONE, chemical substances, gemstones, metallic ores, fissionable and nonfissionable ores, clays, steam and other geothermal resources; MINERAL INTEREST reaches a fee simple or any lesser interest, any royalty, production payment, executive right, nonexecutive right, leasehold or security interest, whether fugacious or nonfugacious, organic or inorganic; and MINERAL ESTATE includes any easement or licence over the land for the purpose of obtaining access to and removing the minerals. So in Connecticut a severed right to take sand and gravel is a mineral interest that can be terminated for twenty years of non use, which is not obvious and is worth saying plainly in a state whose extractive industry is aggregate. TWO EXCLUSIONS: the act does not apply to a mineral interest of the United States or an Indian tribe except as federal law permits, or of the State or any agency or subdivision except as other state law permits, and it does not affect water rights. THE PROVISION MOST LIKELY TO CATCH SOMEBODY OUT is the same one Maryland has and it deserves naming twice: INJECTION FOR DISPOSAL OR STORAGE IS NOT USE. Nebraska counts using the pore space as use. Two states with the same activity and opposite consequences, and Connecticut and Maryland are on the same side of it because they adopted the same uniform text. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Connecticut decision on this act, and §§ 47-31 to 47-33, the quiet title procedure the act borrows its notice from.
Sued under the act you may still record a late notice, the court must let you, and unlike Maryland that rescue has no expiry date
verifiedC.G.S. § 47-33r, Dormant Mineral Interests Act: Preservation of mineral interest by notice
Any person claiming any kind of mineral interest may preserve it by recording a notice of intent to preserve, and the interest is preserved in each town in which the notice is recorded. An interest is not dormant if such a notice was recorded within the twenty years immediately preceding the commencement of an action to terminate it, or after commencement under the late notice provision. The notice may be recorded by the owner or by anybody acting on behalf of an owner who is under a disability, unable to assert a claim on their own behalf, or one of a class whose identity cannot be established or is uncertain, and it may be executed by or on behalf of a co-owner for the benefit of any or all co-owners. It must contain an accurate and full description of all land affected, set out in particular terms and not by general inclusions, though where the interest rests on a recorded instrument the description in that instrument may be used; the then owners of record of the fee simple; a full and complete description of the mineral interest claimed; and a reference to the instruments that created, reserved or evidenced the interest, with the parties, the dates and the volume and page, or, if none, the basis of the claimant's title set out with particularity. And in an action to terminate, the court, on the application of any person alleging to be an owner of a mineral interest, SHALL permit that person to record a late notice on payment to the plaintiff of such litigation expenses as the court may award, meaning costs and expenses reasonably and necessarily incurred in preparing and prosecuting the action, including a reasonable attorney's fee. Once the late notice is recorded the court shall dismiss the action, unless the plaintiff within fifteen days of the order files a motion for permission to continue it as an ordinary action to quiet title.
In an action to terminate a mineral interest pursuant to sections 47-33m to 47-33t, inclusive, the court, upon application of any person alleging to be an owner of a mineral interest in the land described in the complaint shall permit such person to record a late notice of intent to preserve such mineral interest in accordance with section 47-33r upon payment to the plaintiff of such litigation expenses as the court may award.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at C.G.S. §§ 47-33q(b) and 47-33r on 2026-08-03. THIS IS WHERE CONNECTICUT AND MARYLAND SEPARATE, and it is the whole reason both states are worth having on this record rather than one standing for both. The uniform act offers a state a bracketed outer limit on the late notice rescue and Maryland took it: a Maryland mineral owner sued at twenty-five years may still file late and pay the surface owner's costs, and a Maryland mineral owner sued at forty-one years may not, because the rescue is gone. CONNECTICUT DID NOT TAKE THAT OPTION. Nothing read in §§ 47-33m to 47-33t sets any outer limit on the late notice at all, so on the face of the statute a Connecticut interest unused for a century is still curable by a defendant who turns up and pays the costs. That makes Connecticut, on the text, the most forgiving lapse regime on this record for an owner who is actually served, and it belongs beside Wisconsin, whose cure has no deadline either but works the other way round, by letting the mineral owner record at any time until the surface owner records first. Wisconsin's cure runs out when somebody else acts; Connecticut's runs until a court has heard the case. THE FIFTEEN DAY LIMB IS THE PART TO READ TWICE, because it means a late notice does not end the matter. The plaintiff may continue as an ordinary quiet title action, where the mineral owner no longer has the statute's protection and the ordinary law of title decides it. Filing late buys the statutory defence and nothing more. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Connecticut decision on how a court exercises the litigation expense award, and whether any plaintiff has ever used the fifteen day continuation.
A forty year marketable record title act with no mineral exception, and the dormant act says in terms that it keeps running
verifiedC.G.S. § 47-33e, Prior interests void
Any person with an unbroken chain of title to any interest in land for forty years or more is deemed to have a marketable record title to that interest. The root of title is the most recent conveyance or title transaction recorded as of a date forty years before marketability is determined. Such a title is held, and taken by any person dealing with the land, free and clear of all interests, claims or charges whatsoever whose existence depends on any act, transaction, event or omission occurring before the effective date of the root of title, and all of them, however denominated, whether legal or equitable, present or future, whether asserted by a person sui juris or under a disability, whether within or without the state, natural or corporate, private or governmental, are declared null and void. Marketable record title is subject to five things: interests created by or arising out of the muniments forming the chain, but a general reference to easements, use restrictions or other interests created before the root is not sufficient to preserve them unless it specifically identifies a recorded title transaction creating them; interests preserved by a recorded notice or by forty years of continuous possession by the same owner; rights arising from adverse possession or use after the root; interests arising from a title transaction recorded after the root; and the excepted interests in the following section. Those exceptions are a lessor's reversion, easements and interests in the nature of easements whose existence is evidenced by a physical facility beneath, on or above the land whether or not observable, interests of the United States, the State or a political subdivision, of a public service company or a natural gas company, and conservation restrictions held by a land trust or nonprofit organisation. There is no mineral exception. A notice of claim preserving an interest must be recorded within the forty year period, verified by oath, and indexed in the grantors index under the record owners and in the grantees index under the claimant, and no disability or lack of knowledge of any kind suspends the forty years. And nobody may use the privilege of recording such notices to slander title: a court finding that a claim was recorded for that purpose alone shall award the plaintiff all costs, such attorney's fees as it may allow, and all damages sustained as a result.
All such interests, claims or charges, however denominated, whether legal or equitable, present or future, whether those interests, claims or charges are asserted by a person sui juris or under a disability, whether that person is within or without the state, whether that person is natural or corporate, or is private or governmental, are hereby declared to be null and void.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at C.G.S. §§ 47-33b to 47-33l on 2026-08-03, enacted by 1967 P.A. 553 with the root shortened from sixty years to forty by 1969 P.A. 509. THE POINT OF PUTTING THIS BESIDE THE DORMANT ACT IS THAT CONNECTICUT SAYS IN TERMS THAT BOTH RUN. Section 47-33t(c) provides that the Dormant Mineral Interests Act does not limit or affect any other procedure provided by law for extinguishing an abandoned or dormant mineral interest. Vermont, read the same day, also has two routes to the same destination and its two statutes do not mention each other at all; Connecticut's newer statute expressly preserves the older one. So a Connecticut mineral owner has two different clocks and two different filings to keep track of, twenty years and a notice under § 47-33r, forty years and a notice under § 47-33f, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other. Section 47-33h's list of excepted interests was read to its end and contains no mineral exception, which puts Connecticut with Florida and Vermont rather than with Oklahoma, Utah and North Carolina. ONE PROVISION HAS NO COUNTERPART IN THE OTHER ACTS READ FOR THIS RECORD and it cuts against defensive over-filing: § 47-33j makes a person who records a notice of claim for the purpose of slandering title liable for the plaintiff's costs, attorney's fees and all damages sustained. Nothing equivalent appears in Vermont's subchapter, which was read in full the same day. A CAUTION ABOUT THE SOURCE, and it is the reason no case is cited on this page. The Connecticut General Assembly prints annotations under each section, and several appear under these sections, including one recording that the act extinguishes only interests that once existed and cannot create an easement where the grantor had no right to grant. THOSE ANNOTATIONS WERE READ AS PART OF THE STATUTE PAGE AND THE OPINIONS THEMSELVES WERE NOT FETCHED, so nothing on this page rests on any of them. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Connecticut opinion, and how the two acts interact where an interest is saved under one and not the other.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on 1,310 chapter names and two conveyancing chapters read whole
verified10 Del. C. § 7901, Right of entry
Nothing read for this record ends a Delaware mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act, so there is no period of inactivity to survive, nothing to record that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anybody to serve. There is no marketable record title act either, which matters more than it looks: four of the states read this week have one, and in three of them it has no mineral exception and can end an old severed interest that the last forty years of record title never mentioned. Delaware has no such instrument, so an old Delaware severance is not exposed to that route. What can still move a Delaware mineral interest is what can move any interest in land: a conveyance, a tax sale, and twenty years of adverse possession under the real actions chapter, dealt with separately on this page.
No person shall make an entry into any lands, tenements, or hereditaments, but within 20 years next after the person's right or title to the same first descended or accrued.
Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and then by full-text reading, and not by any search. LAYER ONE: all thirty-one titles of the Delaware Code were fetched one by one and parsed into 1,310 chapter names. DORMANT returns 0. MARKETABLE returns 0. SEVER returns 0. The controls are TAX 44, LAND 27, DEED 1 and RECORD 6. LAYER TWO: the two chapters of title 25 where such an act would be codified were read END TO END, chapter 1 Deeds and chapter 3 Titles and Conveyances, 33,501 characters between them, and DORMANT, MARKETABLE, SEVER, MINERAL, MINING, QUARRY, COAL, OIL and GAS appear in none of them, against DEED 23 and RECORD 10. THE COMPARISON THAT MAKES THIS FINDING USEFUL is with the states read alongside it. Connecticut has both a dormant mineral act and a marketable record title act and says in terms that both operate. Rhode Island has the marketable title act and not the dormant act. Vermont has a dormant oil and gas act and a marketable title act that do not mention each other. Massachusetts has neither but registers land in a court whose judgment binds everybody. Delaware has none of the four instruments, which makes it the plainest answer in the group: an old severed interest here is not on any clock. THE QUOTE ATTACHED IS THE TWENTY YEAR LIMITATION ON ENTRY, because there is no dormancy provision to quote and that is the only outside limit found. THE LIMIT OF THE METHOD, and it is stated on the page: a chapter-name count over a code plus two chapters read whole cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose name does not disclose it. On the same day this record read Connecticut, where MINERAL returns 0 across 1,114 chapter names and 90 times inside a chapter called Land Titles. No Delaware decision was read.
The Marketable Record Title Act never mentions minerals, which is why it reaches them
verifiedFla. Stat. s. 712.04, Interests extinguished by marketable record title
Florida has no dormant mineral act. What it has instead is a marketable record title act that can end a severed mineral interest without ever using the word. A person vested with an estate of record for thirty years or more has marketable record title, free and clear of all claims except nine listed exceptions, and the act then declares that title free of every estate, interest, claim or charge whose existence depends on an act, title transaction, event or omission occurring before the effective date of the root of title. None of the nine exceptions is minerals. Two of them are worth a mineral owner's attention because they may catch an interest that would otherwise go: the rights of a person in possession of the land while they remain in possession, and interests arising out of a title transaction recorded after the root of title.
Subject to s. 712.03, a marketable record title is free and clear of all estates, interests, claims, covenants, restrictions, or charges, the existence of which depends upon any act, title transaction, event, zoning requirement, building or development permit, or omission that occurred before the effective date of the root of title.
Checked August 1, 2026. The whole of chapter 712 was fetched and read on 2026-08-01, 27,123 characters, and the term counts over that complete text are: mineral 0, phosphate 0, oil 0, gas 0, petroleum 0, against controls of root of title 11 and 30 years 4. The controls are what make the zeros meaningful; this is a full-text read of the entire chapter rather than an enumeration of headings. The finding matters because a zero here means the OPPOSITE of what a zero usually means on this record. Oklahoma's marketable title act expressly refuses to touch severed minerals, Utah's expressly may not be applied to them, and North Carolina's spares the rights of any owners of mineral rights in five words, and each of those exclusions is why that state is safe. Florida's silence is not an exclusion. An act that clears everything its exceptions do not save, and whose exceptions do not mention minerals, reaches them. No Florida decision was read and Florida has a substantial body of case law on exactly this, so what is published here is what the statute says and not how the courts have applied it.
File a notice within thirty years of the root, and not knowing about it does not help you
verifiedFla. Stat. s. 712.05, Effect of filing notice
The defence is a filing and nothing else. A person claiming an interest subject to extinguishment may preserve it by filing a written notice for record at any time during the thirty years immediately following the effective date of the root of title, and that notice preserves the interest for not less than a further thirty years unless it is filed again. Then comes the sentence that decides how hard this statute is: a person's disability or lack of knowledge of any kind may not delay the commencement of, or suspend the running of, the thirty year period. The act also says in terms that the owner of the marketable record title does not have to file anything to protect it, so the whole burden of filing sits on the severed interest.
A person's disability or lack of knowledge of any kind may not delay the commencement of or suspend the running of the 30-year period.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Fla. Stat. s. 712.05 on 2026-08-01, all four subsections. Set this beside Kansas, which is the record's other answer to the same problem and is its exact inverse: Kansas gives a mineral owner sixty days from RECEIVING ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that the interest lapsed, where nothing was published. Florida legislates that knowledge is irrelevant. The subsection also allows a notice to be filed on behalf of a claimant who is under a disability, unable to assert a claim, or one of a class whose identity cannot be established, which is the statute providing a route for exactly the people the no-knowledge rule would otherwise catch. The contents required in the notice are at s. 712.06 and were not read.
Seven years of neither working the minerals nor paying their taxes, and the surface owner can petition a court to take them
partialO.C.G.A. § 44-5-168read from FindLaw Codes, Georgia Code 44-5-168, current as of March 28, 2024
Georgia has no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act reaching minerals, but a Georgia mineral interest can still be lost for inactivity, and the period is the shortest on this record. Where minerals were conveyed away, or reserved by a grantor who sold the surface in fee simple, O.C.G.A. 44-5-168 lets the surface owner GAIN TITLE BY ADVERSE POSSESSION if the mineral owner has neither worked nor attempted to work the minerals nor paid any taxes due on them. The period is seven years, and it has to run twice over: seven years since the date of the conveyance, and seven years immediately preceding the filing of the petition. Nothing vests on its own. The surface owner must file a petition in the nature of declaratory judgment in the superior court for the county where the land is located, naming the grantor and the last known addresses of the heirs or assigns and anybody else known to have an interest, and pleading the deed and the seven years. Service is perfected as in an in rem proceeding, which expressly includes service by publication, and any person named or holding an interest may intervene. Only on a finding for the plaintiff does the court issue a decree that the mineral rights have been lost. Two exclusions in subsection (f) switch the section off entirely, and they are the practical answer for a mineral owner who does nothing else: it does not apply to a lease for a specific number of years, and it does not apply to an owner of mineral rights who has leased them in writing to a licensed mining operator.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read in full on 2026-08-04 from the verbatim mirror at codes.findlaw.com, the whole of 44-5-168 from subsection (a) through subsection (f), not an index or a summary. The route to it is worth recording because it defeated this record for three days: Georgia publishes the O.C.G.A. through a LexisNexis public access portal that renders free of charge but has no per-section address to cite, and the mirror is what supplies an address a reader can open. A caution on where this section sits. The word MINERAL appears in none of the sixteen chapter names of Title 44, Property, and this section is nonetheless inside Chapter 5, Acquisition and Loss of Property, in the prescription article. A chapter list would have missed it, which is the same trap Connecticut set. Nineteen occurrences of MINERAL inside this one section against zero in the chapter names above it.
Paying the taxes is enough on its own, and a written lease to a licensed mining operator removes the section entirely
partialO.C.G.A. § 44-5-168(a) and (f)read from FindLaw Codes, Georgia Code 44-5-168, current as of March 28, 2024
Three separate things defeat a Georgia adverse possession claim against minerals, and a mineral owner only needs one of them. The test in O.C.G.A. 44-5-168(a) is stated in the conjunctive: the surface owner must show the mineral owner has neither worked the minerals, NOR attempted to work them, NOR paid any taxes due on them. Paying the ad valorem taxes alone therefore defeats the claim, without any work on the ground at all, and so does an attempt to work that never became production. Subsection (f) then removes two situations from the section altogether rather than merely defeating a claim within it: it does not apply to a lease for a specific number of years, and it does not apply to an owner of mineral rights who has leased the mineral rights in writing to a licensed mining operator as defined in the surface mining part of Title 12. That second exclusion is the one worth knowing. A Georgia mineral owner who has signed a written lease with a licensed operator is outside the statute whether or not anybody ever mines, whether or not the taxes are paid, and for as long as the lease stands.
Checked August 4, 2026. Established on 2026-08-04 by reading subsections (a) and (f) of 44-5-168 directly rather than by inference from the catchline. The conjunctive reading is on the face of the text, which says the owner must have neither worked nor attempted to work nor paid any taxes, so any one of the three defeats the petition.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on an enumeration of every chapter in the code
verifiedHRS s. 182-1, Definitions, and the chapter index of the Hawaii Revised Statutes
Nothing read for this record ends a Hawaii mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act. So there is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anyone to serve. What can still move a mineral interest in Hawaii is what can move one anywhere, a conveyance or a tax sale, together with the two things particular to this state: the State's own reservation, which does not lapse and which the board may release only where it judges a non-mining use of greater benefit, and registration of the land in the Land Court, which is the subject of the separate rule on this page.
"Reserved lands" means those lands owned or leased by any person in which the State or its predecessors in interest has reserved to itself expressly or by implication the minerals or right to mine minerals, or both.
Checked August 2, 2026. Established on 2026-08-02 by enumeration with controls and not by any search. The chapter index of the entire Hawaii Revised Statutes was fetched from the Legislature's own table of contents and parsed into chapter number and title pairs: 1,036 entries. The words DORMANT, SEVER and MARKETABLE appear in none of them. The controls are what make those zeros mean something: MINERAL appears exactly once, on chapter 182, and MINING appears exactly once, on chapter 181 Strip Mining, while ABANDON returns 2, CONVEY 4, OIL 5 (all of them soil, used oil or motor oil, none petroleum), GEOTHERM 1, PROPERTY 20, WATER 21, LAND 25 and TAX 32. Hawaii's own structure states the scope better than any count can: subtitle 3 of the statutes is titled MINING AND MINERALS and it contains two chapters, 181 and 182. Chapter 181, Strip Mining, was enumerated to section level, ten sections of permits, bonds, reclamation and penalties, and its section list contains no occurrence of surface owner, landowner, royalty, sever or dormant. THE LIMIT, and it is the same one every enumeration on this record has: this is a title-level count over the whole code plus a section-level read of the only subtitle about minerals, so it cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose title does not disclose it, and no Hawaii decision was read, so it says nothing about judge-made doctrine.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on an enumeration of both titles that would hold one
verifiedIdaho Code Title 47, Mines and Mining, chapter index
Nothing read for this record ends an Idaho mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, so there is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anybody to serve. One section will look like a marketable title act to a search and is not. Idaho Code 55-817 is headed Duration of notice and provides that no public record of any mortgage or other lien on real property GIVEN PRIOR TO JULY 1, 1945 constitutes notice of its existence or contents to subsequent purchasers or encumbrancers for longer than ten years from the maturity date of the obligation, with the execution date substituted where the record does not disclose maturity. It reaches mortgages and liens, not conveyances; it reaches nothing executed in the last eighty years; and it says nothing about a mineral interest. What can still move an Idaho mineral interest is what can move one anywhere, a conveyance or a tax sale, together with adverse possession, which has its own rule on this page and its own twenty year clock.
No public record of any mortgage or other lien on real property, given prior to July 1, 1945, shall constitute notice of the existence or contents of such mortgage or lien, to subsequent purchasers or encumbrancers of the property affected thereby, for a longer period than ten (10) years from the date of maturity of such obligation or indebtedness.
Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and not by any search, because a relevance-ranked search can locate a provision and can never establish that one is absent. The instrument is the complete chapter index of TITLE 47, MINES AND MINING, and of TITLE 55, PROPERTY, each fetched whole and parsed into chapter number and chapter title pairs: eighteen chapters and thirty-two chapters, fifty in total. The words DORMANT, SEVER, LAPSE and MARKETABLE appear in none of the fifty. The controls are what make those zeros mean something: MINERAL returns 2 in Title 47, MINING 6, GEOTHERM 1, OIL 2, ABANDON 1, TAX 1 and RECORD 1; and in Title 55, PROPERTY returns 9, TRANSFER 5, RECORD 3 and UNCLAIMED 1. Title 47's chapters are the Idaho Geological Survey, Oil and Gas Wells, Location of Mining Claims, Mineral Rights in State Lands, Oil and Gas Leases on State and School Lands, Rights of Way and Easements for Development of Mines, Mining Tunnels, Proceeding by Lienholder upon Unpatented Mining Claim, License Tax for Privilege of Mining, Dredge Mining, Mineral Leases by Political Subdivisions, Mined Land Reclamation, Geothermal Resources, the Idaho Abandoned Mine Reclamation Act, Financial Assurance, and three repealed chapters. THE LIMIT, and it is the same limit every enumeration on this record carries: this is a chapter-title count over the two titles where such an act would be codified, so it cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose title does not disclose it, and no Idaho decision was read, so it says nothing about judge-made doctrine.
A court leases for owners nobody can find, and after seven years conveys the interest to the surface owner whether or not anything was produced
verifiedWhere title to a severed mineral interest is vested in an unknown or missing owner, the circuit court may declare a trust, appoint a trustee and authorise a lease on terms it approves. The proceeding can be brought by a surface owner holding the whole or an undivided interest in fee simple, by a fee owner of an undivided interest in the minerals, by the fee owner of the same minerals under immediately adjacent land, or by the holder of a lease from either of the last two. The petition must set out the legal description, the interests, the last known whereabouts of each unknown or missing owner and the sources checked, that diligent inquiry cannot find them, that somebody is willing to buy a lease, and that the plaintiff has or can get the right to mine all the other mineral interests. Notice is by publication in the county newspaper plus a mailed copy. Then, regardless of whether there has been any production, if the owners remain unknown or missing for seven years from the initial judgment authorising a lease, the trustee must move the court on or before the eighth anniversary, join the present surface owners, and on proof that they hold the surface in fee simple the court orders the interest conveyed to them and the accrued balance paid over after fees, taxes, expenses and costs.
Regardless of whether there has been production of the severed mineral interest, if the owners of the severed mineral interests which are the subject of a trustee's lease executed and delivered in accordance with this Act remain unknown or missing for a period of 7 years from the date of entry of the initial judgment authorizing a lease, the trustee shall file a motion with the court
Checked July 31, 2026. Read in the Severed Mineral Interest Act at sections 1 to 9. This is Kentucky's mechanism with the one condition that limited it removed, and the two should be read together because the difference is the whole point. Kentucky's trustee route also runs seven years and also ends in a conveyance to the surface owner, but only where the interests have been produced COMMERCIALLY for that period: the minerals have to be earning money before they can be taken. Illinois opens with the words "Regardless of whether there has been production". So an Illinois owner who cannot be found loses the interest on the clock alone once a trust has been declared, and the trust can be declared on the petition of somebody who merely wants to lease. Attorney fees, expenses and court costs fall on the lessee if a lease is executed and on the plaintiff if none is. WHAT IS NOT READ: sections 6 to 8, on the terms the court may approve, the trustee's bond and the depository.
A surface owner can take a missing owner's minerals by statutory adverse possession, in as little as one year
verifiedA surface owner who wants title to a severed mineral interest held by an unknown or missing owner may petition the circuit court for it by adverse possession. The unknown or missing owners and their unknown heirs, successors and assigns are joined, notice is by publication once a week for three successive weeks with a mailed copy and no default sooner than thirty days after the first publication, and guardians ad litem are appointed for wards and for persons not in being. If the allegations are proved the court enters judgment that the surface owner is from that date exercising presumptive adverse possession of the severed mineral interest. Then either seven years must pass with the owners still unknown or missing, or only one year if the severance took place more than twenty years before the original petition was filed. On a renewed motion, fresh notice, fresh evidence and proof that the plaintiff has paid all taxes legally assessed on the severed interest, the court declares the interest null and void by adverse possession and vests fee title in the surface owners in proportion to their record interests. At any time before that final judgment the mineral owner may intervene and prove ownership.
the court shall enter a judgment declaring that the severed mineral interests are null and void due to adverse possession by the surface owner and that fee title to such severed mineral interests is vested in such surface owner
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 11 of the Severed Mineral Interest Act. This is a mechanism no other state on this record has: adverse possession OF THE MINERALS, run as a statutory court proceeding by the surface owner, rather than the common law doctrine Colorado's page discusses. Two things about it are unusual enough to state twice. The trigger is the OWNER being unfindable, not the interest being unused, so an Illinois mineral owner who is producing nothing but is perfectly reachable is outside it, and one who has simply moved without updating anything is inside it. And the one year route is the fastest extinguishment on this record by a wide margin: seven years is the default, but where the severance itself is more than twenty years old the wait after the presumptive-possession judgment is a single year. The protections are real: publication for three weeks plus mailing, guardians ad litem, the plaintiff must have paid all taxes assessed on the interest, and the true owner may intervene at any time before the final judgment. WHAT IS NOT READ: what the intervening owner must pay the plaintiff, which the section addresses and this record did not follow to the end, and whether any Illinois court has applied the section.
Twenty years unused and the interest is extinguished, with nobody having to do anything
verifiedAn 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.
An interest in coal, oil and gas, and other minerals, if unused for a period of twenty (20) years, is extinguished and the ownership reverts to the owner of the interest out of which the interest in coal, oil and gas, and other minerals was carved. However, if a statement of claim is filed in accordance with this chapter, the reversion does not occur.
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.
Six things count as using an interest, and one is paying the tax on it
verifiedAn Indiana mineral interest is considered used when minerals are produced under it, when operations are conducted on it for injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal of water, gas or other fluids, when rentals or royalties are paid by the owner to delay or enjoy the rights, when any of those happens on a tract the interest may be unitized or pooled with, when in the case of coal or other solid minerals there is production from a common vein or seam by the owners, or when taxes are paid on the interest by its owner. A use authorised by the instrument creating the interest continues in force all rights the instrument granted.
taxes are paid on the mineral interest by the owner of the mineral interest
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at IC 32-23-10-3. The saving list is the part of any dormant mineral act that decides how many interests actually lapse, and Indiana's last item is the one worth pulling out: simply paying the property tax assessed on the interest counts as using it. That is a far lower bar than production or a recorded instrument, and it means an owner who has done nothing but pay a small annual bill has kept the interest alive without ever knowing this chapter existed. The unitisation item matters for the same reason, because a use on a pooled tract counts for the interest itself. Subsection (b) is the other quiet one: a use under or authorised by the instrument that created the interest continues in force all rights granted by that instrument. WHAT IS NOT READ: sections 4, 5 and 6, which carry the statement of claim, the consequences of failing to file one, and the notice and lapse provisions, all of which were seen in the chapter's own section list and not read.
A coal interest dies twenty years after it was created, and using it is beside the point
verifiedIowa 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.
A mineral interest in coal shall be extinguished twenty years after its creation, transfer, or preservation, unless a statement of claim is filed in accordance with section 557C.3, and the ownership shall revert to the person who was then the owner of the interest from which the mineral interest in coal was created, transferred, or preserved.
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.
File a statement of claim, unless the interest was ever separately taxed after July 1971
verifiedIowa Code s. 557C.6, Exemption
The filing is simple and the exemption from it is the part worth knowing. A statement of claim must be filed by the owner of the coal interest before the end of the twenty year period, or by 1 July 1994, whichever is later, and must contain the owner's name and address and a description of the real estate on or under which the interest sits, filed in the office of the county recorder. But the filing is not required at all of an owner whose mineral interest was separately taxed for real estate tax purposes at any time after 1 July 1971. Having appeared once on the tax roll, ever, in the last half century, takes the interest outside the whole chapter.
The filing of the statement of claim required under section 557C.3 to preserve the mineral interest in coal shall not be required of an owner if the mineral interest was separately taxed for real estate tax purposes at any time after July 1, 1971.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Iowa Code ss. 557C.3, 557C.4 and 557C.6 on 2026-08-01. The exemption is a fifth answer on this record to how a state's property tax interacts with its dormancy rule, and it is the most generous of the five. Kansas and Washington count paying the tax as a qualifying USE, so it has to be recent enough to fall inside the period. Minnesota makes timely payment half a defence to forfeiture. Nebraska says paying does not help at all. Alabama takes the interest off the roll for good. Iowa asks only whether the interest was ever separately taxed after a fixed date in 1971, and if it was, the clock never applies. Note the word SEPARATELY: what matters is that the interest was assessed in its own right, which s. 458A.18 requires for every severed mineral interest in the state, and not that tax was paid on the land above it. On filing, s. 557C.4 requires the recorder to record the statement and index it with the entries in ss. 558.49 and 558.52, neither of which was read.
A stranger to the coal cannot bring it back by reserving it in a later deed
verifiedIowa Code s. 557C.5, Reservation in other conveyance
One short section closes the obvious way round the statute. A reservation or exception of a mineral interest in coal, contained in a conveyance of the interest out of which it is carved, made by somebody who does not own the coal interest, neither satisfies the requirements of the chapter nor revives a coal interest that the chapter has already extinguished. So a later deed cannot resurrect dead coal by mentioning it, and a person who never held the coal cannot create the appearance of a live interest by carving one out on paper.
A reservation of a mineral interest in coal or an exception of a mineral interest in coal, contained in a conveyance of the interest out of which it is carved, by a nonowner of the mineral interest in coal shall not be deemed to satisfy the requirements of this chapter or as a revival of a mineral interest in coal otherwise extinguished under this chapter.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Iowa Code s. 557C.5 on 2026-08-01. This is an anti-revival provision and no other state on this record has one that was read. It matters because of how Iowa's clock works: since the twenty years run from creation, transfer or preservation rather than from non use, a fresh instrument mentioning the coal would otherwise look like a transfer and restart everything. The section stops that where the person doing the reserving is a NONOWNER. What it does not address, and nothing read here answers, is the position where the person reserving does own the interest but the twenty years have already run.
Twenty years unused and it reverts to the current surface owner, with six things counting as use
verifiedAn 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.
An interest in coal, oil, gas or other minerals, if unused for a period of 20 years, shall lapse, unless a statement of claim is filed in accordance with K.S.A. 55-1604, and the ownership shall revert to the current surface owner.
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.
File a statement of claim, and if you miss it you still have sixty days from the day you find out
verifiedA mineral interest owner may file a statement of claim before the end of the twenty year period, giving the owner's name and address and a description of the land, in the office of the register of deeds of the county where the land is. On filing in time the interest is treated as having been used on the date of filing. Failure to file in time does not extinguish the interest if the owner files within sixty days after publication of a notice of lapse, or within sixty days after receiving actual knowledge that the interest had lapsed where no notice is published. A person who will succeed to the ownership must publish notice of the lapse in a newspaper of general circulation in the county and, where the owner's address is shown of record or can be determined on reasonable inquiry, mail a copy by restricted mail within ten days of publication. Filing a copy of the notice with an affidavit of publication and service makes the record prima facie evidence in any legal proceeding that notice was given, and the register of deeds notes the statement of claim or the affidavit in the margin of the instrument that created the interest.
Failure to file a statement of claim within the time prescribed by subsection (a) shall not cause a mineral interest to be extinguished if the owner of the mineral interest filed the statement of claim within 60 days after (1) publication of notice as prescribed by K.S.A. 55-1605, if such notice is published or (2) within 60 days after receiving actual knowledge that the mineral interest had lapsed, if such notice is not published.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 55-1604, 55-1605 and 55-1606. The second limb of the quoted subsection is the part with no counterpart on this record and it is worth reading twice: where no notice is published at all, the owner still has sixty days from RECEIVING ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that the interest had lapsed. Ohio and North Dakota both give sixty days from a notice, so an owner who is never noticed is protected only to the extent the notice procedure is enforced. Kansas ties the second chance to the owner learning of it rather than to anybody having told them, which means a Kansas interest is not quietly gone while its owner is unaware. Note also the marginal notation duty in section 55-1606, which puts both the claim and the lapse notice on the face of the record of the original instrument, so a title searcher meets them where they are looking. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any Kansas decision has construed "actual knowledge" here, and what happens between lapse and the filing of a late claim.
After seven years of production with the owners still missing, the court gives the minerals to the surface owner
verifiedWhere severed Kentucky mineral interests subject to a trustee's lease are produced commercially and their owners remain unknown or missing for seven years from first production, the trustee must move the court, naming the present surface owners, who must prove they hold the surface in fee simple. On that finding the court orders the trustee to convey the missing owners' mineral interests to the surface owners by recordable instrument, and the accrued funds are paid to the surface owners after fees, expenses and court costs. From the conveyance the surface owners take all proceeds of production.
the court shall order the trustee to convey to the surface owners by recordable instrument the unknown or missing owners' interest in the severed mineral interests, which conveyance shall be approved by endorsement by the court on the face thereof.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read as the per-section PDF the General Assembly publishes for KRS 353.470. THIS DOES NOT FIT ANY OF THE FOUR MECHANISMS THIS RECORD HAS SO FAR AND THE CLASSIFICATION IS DELIBERATELY NOT MADE HERE; see the judgment queue. It has the shape of Montana's and Pennsylvania's trusts at the start, a court-appointed trustee leasing on behalf of owners who cannot be found, and it ends where Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan and Indiana end, with the minerals in the surface owner's hands, but the route between the two is unlike either. Nothing happens on non use alone: the trigger is seven years of COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION under the trustee's lease with the owners still missing, so the interest has to be earning money before it can be taken. The surface owners must be joined and must prove fee simple title to the satisfaction of the court. And the accrued royalties go to the surface owners too, after the trustee's fee and costs. WHAT IS NOT READ: KRS 353.460 to 353.468, which set up the proceeding, the effort to locate owners required before a trustee is appointed, and the terms of the trustee's lease; and KRS 353.472, on payment to a surface owner where a leased mineral was never produced commercially.
Ten years of nonuse and the servitude is gone, with nobody having to do anything
verifiedA 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.
A mineral servitude is extinguished by: (1) prescription resulting from nonuse for ten years;
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.
A mineral royalty prescribes on the same ten years, and the royalty owner cannot make it happen
verifiedA mineral royalty is extinguished by prescription resulting from nonuse for ten years, by confusion with the title out of which it was created, by renunciation or express remission, by expiration of its term or the happening of a dissolving condition, and by extinction of the right of the person who established it. There is an exception in the last of those: the extinction of a mineral servitude by inheritance, or by any act of the servitude owner, does not extinguish a royalty burdening that servitude unless the royalty owner is a party to the act or otherwise consents expressly and in writing to be bound by it.
A mineral royalty is extinguished by: (1) prescription resulting from nonuse for ten years;
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at article 85 of the Mineral Code. Worth a rule of its own because it is the position most readers of this site are actually in, and because it is the harshest arithmetic on this record. A mineral royalty carries no right to conduct operations, so a royalty owner cannot do the thing that interrupts prescription. Ten years of nobody drilling and the royalty is gone, and nothing the royalty owner can do about it appears in this article. The protection in paragraph (5) is narrow and specific: it stops the servitude owner destroying the royalty by giving up the servitude or by dying, unless the royalty owner agreed. WHAT IS NOT READ: articles 86 through 99, which govern when prescription commences on a royalty, what production interrupts it, and the effect of an obstacle, and article 93 on acknowledgment, which is the royalty owner's nearest equivalent to a saving act.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on the title names and on every chapter of the Property title
verifiedMaine Revised Statutes, list of titles
Nothing read for this record ends a Maine mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, so there is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anybody to serve. Maine has no title of its statutes named for minerals or mining either: metallic mineral mining is regulated inside Title 38, Waters and Navigation, as the Maine Metallic Mineral Mining Act, and the tax on it sits in Title 36 as a business tax, which is a structural fact worth knowing before searching. What can still move a Maine mineral interest is what can move one anywhere, a conveyance or a tax sale, together with adverse possession on the twenty year rule dealt with separately on this page.
No person shall commence any real or mixed action for the recovery of lands, or make an entry thereon, unless within 20 years after the right to do so first accrued, or unless within 20 years after he or those under whom he claims were seized or possessed of the premises, except as provided in this subchapter.
Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and not by any search. Two layers. FIRST, the whole code at title level: the Revisor's list of titles was fetched and parsed into 64 title numbers and names, and MINERAL, MINING, DORMANT, SEVER and MARKETABLE appear in none of them, against controls of CONSERVATION 2 at titles 7-A and 12, PROPERT 1 at title 33, TAXATION 1 at title 36 and WATERS 1 at title 38. SECOND, title 33, Property, enumerated to chapter level: 38 chapters, from Contracts for Sale of Real Estate at chapter 1 through the Maine Revised Unclaimed Property Act at chapter 45. DORMANT, SEVER, MARKETABLE, MINERAL and MINING return zero across all 38, against controls of UNCLAIMED 4, DEED 2 at chapter 11 Register of Deeds and chapter 12 the Short Form Deeds Act, CONVEY 1 at chapter 7 Conveyance of Real Estate, and PERPETUIT 2 at chapters 5 and 5-A. THE LIMIT is the one every enumeration on this record carries: this is a name-level count over the code plus a chapter-level count over the title that would hold such an act, so it cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose title does not disclose it, and no Maine decision was read. The quote attached to this rule is the limitation section rather than any dormancy provision, because there is no dormancy provision to quote, and twenty years to bring a real action is the only outside limit on a Maine mineral interest that was found.
Twenty years unused with nothing recorded, and a surface owner can sue to terminate the interest
verifiedMd. Code, Environment s. 15-1203, Action to terminate dormant mineral interest
On or after 1 October 2011 a surface owner of real property subject to a mineral interest may maintain an action to terminate a dormant mineral interest. An interest is dormant if it is unused for twenty or more years preceding the commencement of termination AND no notice of the mineral interest was recorded during that same period. The action is in the nature of, and requires the same notice as, an action to quiet title under section 14-108 of the Real Property Article, and it may be maintained whether or not the owner is unknown or missing. It is brought in the circuit court for the jurisdiction where the property is. A court order terminating the interest merges it, including express and implied appurtenant surface rights and obligations, with the surface estate in shares proportionate to the ownership of the surface estate, subject to existing liens for taxes or assessments. The order must identify the mineral interest, each surface estate it merges into with tax map and parcel number, the name of each surface owner, the name of each prior mineral owner if known, and anything else the court thinks describes the effect, and the clerk records it in the land records. The section applies notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the instrument that created the interest or in any other recorded document, unless that document provides an earlier termination date.
A mineral interest is dormant for the purpose of this subtitle if: (i) The mineral interest is unused for a period of 20 or more years preceding the commencement of termination of the mineral interest; and (ii) Notice of the mineral interest was not recorded during the period of 20 or more years preceding the commencement of termination of the mineral interest.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment ss. 15-1201 to 15-1203 on 2026-08-03. THE CITATION IS THE FIRST FINDING. The probe that put Maryland on this list guessed Real Property ss. 15-1201 and 15-1202 and got nothing back, and recorded that the host answers but the citation was not located. It is in the ENVIRONMENT article, title 15, subtitle 12, and the same section numbers exist there. Maryland is also the state here that took the UNIFORM act rather than writing its own, and section 15-1202(b) says so in terms: the purpose of this subtitle is to make uniform the law governing dormant mineral interests among the states. Scope is set by 15-1202(a): the subtitle applies to all mineral interests except those held by the United States or a Native American tribe, and those held by the State or its agencies or political subdivisions, in each case except so far as federal or State law permits. It does not limit any other procedure for clearing an abandoned mineral interest, and it does not affect water rights. The definitions at 15-1201 are worth reading before relying on any of it: MINERAL INTEREST reaches a fee simple or any lesser interest and any kind of royalty, production payment, executive right, non-executive right, leasehold or lien in minerals, and SURFACE OWNER expressly excludes the owner of a right of way, easement or leasehold, so a tenant cannot bring the action. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 14-108 of the Real Property Article, which supplies the notice the action requires, and any Maryland decision under the subtitle.
Production, a recording, a judgment or a tax payment all count as use, and injecting for storage does not
verifiedMd. Code, Environment s. 15-1203, Action to terminate dormant mineral interest
Four things constitute use of a Maryland mineral interest, and each of the first three counts as use of the entire interest owned by that owner rather than only of the mineral it touched. Active mineral operations on or below the surface of the property, or of other property utilised or pooled with it, including production, geophysical exploration, exploratory or developmental drilling, mining, exploitation and development. Recordation of an instrument that creates, reserves or otherwise evidences a claim to, or the continued existence of, the interest, including one that transfers, leases or divides it. A judgment or decree making specific reference to a mineral that is part of the interest, recorded by or under the owner's authority, which counts as use of the interest the judgment specifies. And payment of a tax on a separate assessment of the interest, or a transfer tax, or a severance tax, which counts as use of the entire taxed interest and of any other untaxed interest in which the owner holds all or part. Then the exclusion, which is a single sentence and is pointed: the injection of substances for the purpose of disposal or storage does not constitute use of a mineral interest.
The injection of substances for the purpose of disposal or storage does not constitute use of a mineral interest.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1203(c) on 2026-08-03. The exclusion is the opposite of Nebraska, which is on this record as a state where using the PORE SPACE is one of the listed things that saves an interest from its dormant mineral act. Maryland says injecting for disposal or storage is not use at all. Two states, the same physical activity, opposite consequences for the owner who does it, and the difference matters more each year as disposal and carbon storage become the live use of depleted formations. Note also how wide the rest of the list is by comparison with Oregon, read the day before, whose extinguishment statute lists two record events and no uses at all: Maryland counts production, exploration, drilling, mining, a recorded instrument of any kind, a recorded judgment, and three different taxes. And note that operations on OTHER property pooled or utilised with yours count, so a unit well saves every interest in the unit. THE TAX LIMB IS BROKEN AS DRAFTED and the page says so: all three taxes are said to be in accordance with s. 8-229 of the Tax Property Article, and s. 8-229 was read in full and is one sentence permitting a separate assessment of severed minerals. It contains no transfer tax and no severance tax. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any Maryland county in fact separately assesses severed minerals, which is what would make the tax limb usable at all.
Record a notice at any time, and even after you are sued you can file late, until the fortieth year
verifiedMd. Code, Environment s. 15-1205, Late notice of intent to preserve
An owner of a mineral interest may record a notice of intent to preserve the interest, or part of it, at any time, and the interest is preserved in the county where the notice is recorded. It may be recorded by an owner, by another person legally authorised to act for the owner, or by a co-owner for the benefit of any or all co-owners. The notice must contain the name of the owner or co-owners, or, if the identity of the owner cannot be determined, a statement that it cannot; and an identification of the interest, which may be by reference to the location in the records of the instrument that created or evidenced it, by the judgment or decree confirming it, by a legal description accompanied by the name of the record owner under whom the owner claims, or by a general reference to any or all mineral interests of the owner in any real property in the county where a previously recorded instrument or a judgment established the interest. Then the rescue. In an action to terminate a mineral interest the court SHALL permit the owner to record a late notice of intent to preserve as a condition of dismissal of the action, if the owner pays the litigation expenses incurred by the surface owner, which are defined as the costs and expenses the court determines were reasonably and necessarily incurred in preparing and prosecuting the action, including reasonable attorney fees. And the rescue has a cliff: it does not apply where the interest has been unused for forty years or more before the action was commenced.
This section does not apply in an action in which a mineral interest has been unused in accordance with s. 15-1203 of this subtitle for a period of 40 years or more preceding the commencement of the action.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment ss. 15-1204 and 15-1205 on 2026-08-03. California is the other state on this record with this rescue and the comparison is exact on the first half and different on the second. There too the court must let a mineral owner file a late notice as a condition of dismissing the surface owner's suit, on payment of the surface owner's costs. What California has no equivalent of, on what has been read there, is Maryland's FORTY YEAR CLIFF: at forty years of non use the late notice is gone and the action proceeds. So Maryland's act has two clocks rather than one, and a mineral owner who has let twenty years pass is in a different position from one who has let forty pass, even though both are equally dormant under 15-1203. The general reference option in 15-1204(c)(4) is the practical one and is easy to miss: an owner may preserve any or all of their mineral interests in an entire county with a single general reference, provided a previously recorded instrument or a judgment established them, so the filing does not require assembling a legal description for each parcel. WHAT IS NOT READ: what a Maryland court has held reasonable and necessary as litigation expenses, and whether any late notice has been permitted.
A court can put a missing owner's interest in trust, lease it to the surface owner, and convey it away after five years
verifiedMd. Code, Environment s. 15-1206, Trust for unknown or missing owner
Where title to a severed mineral interest is vested in an unknown or missing owner, the circuit court of the county where the interest is located may, on petition and after notice and a hearing, place the interest in trust, appoint a trustee for the unknown or missing owner, order the trustee to create a separate trust bank account, authorise the trustee to sell, execute and deliver a valid lease on the minerals TO THE OWNER OF THE SURFACE ESTATE, and place conditions on that authorisation. The petition may be filed by a person vested in fee simple with the whole or an undivided interest in the surface estate. If the missing owner does not contest the trust within five years of the order creating it, the trustee MUST petition to terminate the trust and convey title to the surface owners, naming as defendants the surface owners and anybody else with a legal interest including unknown owners, and supporting it with an affidavit from the surface owners of fee simple ownership and an affidavit from the trustee that after diligent inquiry, including a search of the county land records, the register of wills records and the circuit court records performed in accordance with generally accepted standards of title examination, the trustee cannot locate the owner. If the owner does not appear and the court finds the petitioners are the fee simple surface owners, the court orders the conveyance. The trustee conveys by recordable instrument, pays taxes, costs, expenses and fees out of the trust account, pays any balance to the surface owners, closes the account and files a final report, after which the surface owners are entitled to all proceeds from the lease.
If the unknown or missing owner of a vested severed mineral interest does not contest a trust created under subsection (a)(1) of this section on or before 5 years after the date that the court issued the order creating the trust, the trustee shall file a petition to terminate the trust and to convey title to the severed mineral interest to the surface owners.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1206 on 2026-08-03. This is a SECOND and entirely separate route by which a Maryland mineral interest changes hands, and it runs on being unfindable rather than on being unused. Montana and Pennsylvania are on this record as states where a court appoints somebody to lease for an owner it cannot find, and in both the interest itself is untouchable: the trust supplies a missing owner with somebody to act FOR them and stops there. Kentucky and Illinois are the states where a trust ends in a conveyance to the surface owner, Kentucky after seven years of COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION and Illinois after seven years regardless. Maryland's is five years and the trigger is simply that nobody contested, which is the shortest and the least demanding of the four. Note who the lease goes to: the statute authorises the trustee to lease the minerals to the SURFACE OWNER, not to an operator at arm's length, so the person petitioning for the trust is also the person who gets the lease and, five years later, the interest. The trustee's affidavit is the one real protection and it is a substantial one, requiring a title standard search of three separate county record sets. WHAT IS NOT READ: the Maryland Rules, which subsection (h) says govern notice to interested persons, the form of petitions and the conduct of the hearing, and any case under this section.
A judgment of registration binds the land against all persons, including anybody reached only by the words to all whom it may concern
verifiedIf the Land Court finds after hearing that the plaintiff has title proper for registration, a judgment of confirmation and registration is entered, which binds the land and quiets the title, subject only to the exceptions in the next section. It is conclusive upon and against all persons, including the Commonwealth, whether mentioned by name in the complaint, notice or citation, or included in the general description to all whom it may concern. The judgment may not be opened by reason of the absence, infancy or other disability of any person affected by it, nor by any proceeding at law or in equity for reversing judgments or decrees. One exception exists and it is narrow: a person deprived of land, or of any estate or interest in it, by a judgment obtained BY FRAUD may file a complaint for review within one year of entry, provided no innocent purchaser for value has acquired an interest. If there is such a purchaser the judgment is not opened at all but remains in full force and effect forever, subject only to a right of appeal. What survives is a remedy in tort against the plaintiff or anybody else for fraud in procuring the judgment.
It shall be conclusive upon and against all persons, including the commonwealth, whether mentioned by name in the complaint, notice or citation, or included in the general description ''to all whom it may concern''.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at MGL c. 185 § 45 on 2026-08-03, within a full-chapter read described in the rule below. THIS IS THE THIRD TORRENS STATE ON THIS RECORD AND THE FIRST TO ANSWER. Minnesota's page and Hawaii's page both stop at the identical unanswered question, whether registration cuts off a severed interest that was never noted on the certificate, and both say so in public. Massachusetts's statute answers it in terms that do not depend on minerals at all. Four features do the work and all four cut against an absent owner. FIRST, the judgment binds a person reached only by the general description TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, so being unnamed is not a defence. SECOND, absence, infancy and other disability are expressly excluded as grounds to open it, which is the same policy Florida and Vermont apply to their marketable title acts in the words lack of knowledge of any kind. THIRD, the only reopening is for FRAUD and it expires in one year. FOURTH, even that year is cut short by the arrival of an innocent purchaser for value, after which the statute says the judgment remains in force FOREVER. WHAT THIS RECORD DOES NOT SAY, and the restraint is deliberate: no Massachusetts decision was fetched, so whether any court has actually held that registration extinguished a severed mineral interest is unknown here. The page states the text of §§ 45 and 46 and stops. Also not established: how many Massachusetts parcels are registered, and whether any registered parcel has severed minerals under it.
A registered owner holds free of every encumbrance except those noted on the certificate and seven survivals, and minerals are not one of the seven
verifiedMGL c. 185 § 46, Encumbrances affecting certificates of title
Every plaintiff receiving a certificate of title under a judgment of registration, and every subsequent purchaser of registered land taking a certificate for value and in good faith, holds it free from all encumbrances except those noted on the certificate and seven listed survivals. First, liens, claims or rights arising under the laws or constitution of the United States or the statutes of the Commonwealth which are not by law required to appear of record in the registry of deeds in order to be valid against subsequent purchasers or encumbrancers of record. Second, taxes, within three years after they have been committed to the collector. Third, any highway, town way or private way laid out under the highways chapter, if the certificate does not state that the boundary of the way has been determined. Fourth, any lease for a term not exceeding seven years. Fifth, any liability to assessment for betterments or other statutory liability which attaches to land as a lien, with a proviso saving easements or rights appurtenant to a registered parcel that failed for any reason to be registered. Sixth, federal tax liens and any other federal lien filed in the Commonwealth. Seventh, liens in favour of the Commonwealth for unpaid taxes. That is the whole list. There is no exception for a mineral, mining, oil, gas or subsurface interest, and none for a severed estate of any kind.
Every plaintiff receiving a certificate of title in pursuance of a judgment of registration, and every subsequent purchaser of registered land taking a certificate of title for value and in good faith, shall hold the same free from all encumbrances except those noted on the certificate, and any of the following encumbrances which may be existing:
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at MGL c. 185 § 46 on 2026-08-03, and the negative behind it is the largest full-text read on this record. ALL 125 SECTIONS OF CHAPTER 185 WERE FETCHED AND READ END TO END, 119,988 characters. MINERAL returns 0. COAL 0. OIL 0. GAS 0. QUARRY 0. SUBSURFACE 0. The controls are heavy and they are what makes the zeros mean something: CERTIFICATE 157, REGISTERED 151, FEE SIMPLE 20, ENCUMBRANCE 18, EASEMENT 13, ASSURANCE FUND 12. The four hits for SEVER were inspected one by one and every one is severalty or a severance of the complaint; the single hit for MINING is inside the word determining. So the chapter that decides what survives registration in Massachusetts never contemplates a mineral interest in any form. TWO EXCEPTIONS DESERVE A SECOND LOOK BEFORE ANYBODY CONCLUDES THAT SETTLES IT, and the page names both rather than asserting a clean result. The FIRST exception saves rights arising under the laws of the United States or of the Commonwealth which are not by law required to appear of record, which is where a federal reservation would sit; nothing read tells us it reaches a private severance, and nothing read tells us it does not. The FIFTH saves easements or rights appurtenant to the registered parcel that failed to be registered, which protects a right that BENEFITS the registered land rather than one that burdens it, and a severed mineral estate is not appurtenant to the surface. Read this against the two other Torrens states here. Minnesota keeps two offices, a county recorder for abstract land and a registrar of titles for Torrens land, and its own severed mineral registration statute directs a filing to whichever fits the parcel; Hawaii runs the same split inside one bureau. Neither page could say what registration does to an unnoted severed interest. Massachusetts's § 46 is the text that answers, and this record publishes the text without publishing a conclusion no decision supports.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, and the thirty year rule people will point at reaches restrictions on use rather than ownership
verifiedMGL c. 184 § 23, Conditions or restrictions; term of years; applicability
Nothing read for this record ends a Massachusetts mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act. What Massachusetts has instead, and what a searcher will be pointed at, is a set of time limits on RESTRICTIONS. Conditions or restrictions unlimited as to time by which the title or use of real property is affected are limited to thirty years from the date of the instrument creating them, except for gifts or devises for public, charitable or religious purposes, restrictions existing on 16 July 1887, restrictions in a grant of the Commonwealth, and conservation and similar restrictions held by a governmental body. A longer scheme in the following sections governs restrictions on the USE of land or CONSTRUCTION on it that run with the land, with different limits for restrictions imposed before and after 1 January 1962 and a machinery for extending them by recorded notice. A severed mineral estate is an ownership interest rather than a restriction on use or construction, and nothing read applies these sections to one. There is also a curative section for defects, irregularities and omissions in deeds after a stated period, which was not read.
Conditions or restrictions, unlimited as to time, by which the title or use of real property is affected, shall be limited to the term of thirty years after the date of the deed or other instrument or the date of the probate of the will creating them, except in cases of gifts or devises for public, charitable or religious purposes.
Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and then by full-text reading, and not by any search. LAYER ONE, the whole code at chapter level: the five parts and thirty-four titles of the General Laws were enumerated into 699 chapter names, and DORMANT returns 0, MARKETABLE returns 0, SEVER returns 0, MINERAL returns 0, QUARRY 0, EARTH 0, GRAVEL 0 and STONE 0, against controls of TAX 33, REGISTRATION 10 and DEED 2. LAYER TWO, the chapters where such an act would be codified read END TO END: c. 183, Alienation of Land, 85 sections and 120,791 characters, and c. 184, General Provisions Relative to Real Property, 43 sections and 68,749 characters. In c. 183 MINERAL returns 0, COAL 0, OIL 0, GAS 0, SEVERED 0 and SEVERANCE 0, against DEED 107 and RECORD 207. In c. 184 MINERAL returns 3 and all three were inspected: every one is inside the definition of a conservation, agricultural preservation or watershed preservation restriction, in the phrase excavation, dredging or removal of loam, peat, gravel, soil, rock OR OTHER MINERAL SUBSTANCE, and none of the three is about who owns anything. WHAT THE THIRTY YEARS CANNOT BE ASSUMED TO DO: § 23 reaches conditions and restrictions by which the title or use of real property is affected, which is wider wording than §§ 26 to 30, and this record did not read any Massachusetts decision on whether it reaches a reservation of minerals in a deed. The page states the text and refuses the inference in both directions. THE LIMIT of the method is the usual one and is stated on the page: a chapter-name count over the code plus three chapters read whole cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose name does not disclose it. Massachusetts's own c. 21B is the proof of that limit in this state, because a chapter called MINING REGULATION AND RECLAMATION turns out on reading to be about coal alone.
Twenty years of silence and it vests in the surface owner, with no warning
verifiedA 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.
Any interest in oil or gas deemed abandoned as provided in subsection (1) shall vest as of the date of such abandonment in the owner or owners of the surface in keeping with the character of the surface ownership.
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.
A recorded claim buys another twenty years, and can be repeated
verifiedA Michigan oil or gas interest is preserved by recording a written notice with the register of deeds, verified by oath, describing the land and the nature of the interest, naming and addressing the claimant, and stating that they wish to preserve it and do not intend to abandon it. Recording preserves the interest for twenty years from that date.
The notice shall be verified by oath and shall describe the land and the nature of the interest claimed, give the name and address of the person or persons claiming the interest, and state that the person or persons desire to preserve the interest and do not intend to abandon the interest.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the preservation section of the same act. Subsection (3) is the part that makes this a renewable defence rather than a one-off: recording preserves the interest for twenty years, and at the end of that period it is deemed abandoned again unless the interest has in the meantime shown its nondormant character by a recorded sale, lease, mortgage or transfer, a drilling permit, production, or underground gas storage use. Subsection (2) lets a holder of interests used in underground gas storage preserve a whole field or pool by a single notice defining its boundaries and formations, without describing each separate interest. Given that Michigan gives no notice before an interest vests, recording this claim is the only step within a mineral owner's own control.
A dormant interest is not spared by tax foreclosure either
verifiedWhere a judgment of foreclosure is entered for delinquent property taxes, a Michigan oil or gas interest owned by someone other than the surface owner is not preserved from that foreclosure unless the interest was sold, leased, mortgaged, transferred, reserved or made subject to a claim of interest, and an instrument evidencing it recorded, during the twenty years immediately before the foreclosure petition was filed.
an oil or gas interest in the property owned by a person other than the owner of the surface shall not be preserved from foreclosure under section 78k of the general property tax act, 1893 PA 206, MCL 211.78k, unless that interest is sold, leased, mortgaged, transferred, reserved, or subject to a claim of interest under section 2 and an instrument evidencing the sale, lease, mortgage, transfer, reservation, or claim of interest is recorded
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at subsection (3) of the same section, added by 2006 PA 519. It is recorded as its own rule because it is a second and independent route by which a Michigan oil or gas interest can be lost, running off the same twenty year record test but triggered by somebody else's unpaid property taxes rather than by the surface owner doing anything. The general property tax act sections it refers to were not read, so this page does not describe how a tax foreclosure proceeds or what notice it carries.
Every severed mineral owner has had to file a statement naming themselves since 1970
verifiedSince 1 January 1970 every owner of a fee simple mineral interest in Minnesota that is owned separately from the surface fee has had to record a verified statement, in triplicate, with the county recorder or, for registered property, the registrar of titles. It must cite sections 93.52 to 93.551 and set out the owner's address, their interest in the minerals, the legal description of the land, and the book and page or document number of the instrument that created or acquired the interest. No statement may cover mineral interests from more than one government section unless the creating instrument does. The United States, the state of Minnesota, and any American Indian tribe or band owning reservation lands in the state are exempt.
from and after January 1, 1970, every owner of a fee simple interest in minerals, hereafter referred to as a mineral interest, in lands in this state, which interest is owned separately from the fee title to the surface of the property upon or beneath which the mineral interest exists, shall record in the office of the county recorder or, if registered property, in the office of the registrar of titles in the county where the mineral interest is located a verified statement, in triplicate, citing sections 93.52 to 93.551
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Minn. Stat. § 93.52 subd. 2 in the 2025 Minnesota Statutes on the Revisor's own site, with the exemptions at subd. 3. This is the hinge of Minnesota's whole scheme and it is a different question from the one every other state on this record asks. Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska and Kansas all ask whether an interest has been USED. Minnesota asks whether its owner has IDENTIFIED THEMSELVES, once, in a filing whose only purpose is to say who they are and what they own. An interest under active production whose owner never filed the statement is exposed; an interest that has never produced anything but whose owner filed is not. The state gives its own reason in subd. 1, which is worth reading beside the rule: the purpose is to identify and clarify the obscure and divided ownership condition of severed mineral interests, because that condition is becoming more obscure and further fractionalized with time and so the development of mineral interests in the state is often impaired. Note the two registries. Minnesota runs abstract property through the county recorder and Torrens-registered property through the registrar of titles, and this section requires the statement to go to whichever fits the parcel, so the answer to where you file depends on the land and not on the state. The recorder must file a copy with the county auditor within 60 days, which is how the interest reaches the tax roll under § 273.165. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any Minnesota decision has construed the filing requirement, and what happens where a single instrument creates interests across more than one government section in practice.
An unfiled interest forfeits to the state, and no other state on this record does that
verifiedAn owner who failed to record the section 93.52 statement, before 1 January 1975 for interests owned on or before 31 December 1973, or within one year of acquiring for interests acquired after that date, forfeits the mineral interest to the state after notice and an opportunity for hearing. The commissioner of natural resources notifies the last owner of record and moves for an order to show cause why the forfeiture should not be absolute, served in the manner of a summons in an action to determine adverse claims.
If the owner of a mineral interest fails to record the verified statement required by section 93.52, before January 1, 1975, as to any interests owned on or before December 31, 1973, or within one year after acquiring the interests as to interests acquired after December 31, 1973, the mineral interest shall forfeit to the state after notice and opportunity for hearing as provided in this section.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Minn. Stat. § 93.55 subd. 1, with the notice and hearing machinery at subd. 2. The destination is what makes this state worth reading. Every other lapse mechanism on this record moves the interest to the surface owner: Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan, Nebraska and Kansas all do, and Indiana sends it to the owner of the interest out of which it was carved, which is still a private party. Montana, Pennsylvania and Virginia do not move it at all and appoint somebody to act for an owner who cannot be found. Minnesota takes it. A Minnesota surface owner gains nothing from their neighbour's forfeiture. Note also that this is a court proceeding and not a self-executing lapse: the statute requires notice, an order to show cause, and a judgment adjudging the forfeiture absolute, which puts it at the opposite end of the procedural range from Michigan, where the interest vests as of the date of abandonment with nothing required of anybody. WHAT IS NOT READ: how many interests have actually been forfeited under this section, and whether the state publishes a list of them.
The state may lease the interest before the forfeiture is final, and must cite Texaco v. Short when it does
verifiedBefore the notice and hearing procedure is complete, the commissioner of natural resources may lease a severed mineral interest whose owner failed to file. Any such lease must cite, as the authority for issuing it, the subdivision, the lease-terms subdivision, and the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Texaco, Inc. v. Short. A lessee holding such a lease may not mine until the commissioner completes the procedure and a court has adjudged the forfeiture absolute, and mine is defined to exclude exploration activities, exploratory boring, trenching, test pitting, test shafts and drifts.
In any lease issued under this subdivision, the commissioner shall cite, as authority for issuing the lease, this subdivision, subdivision 3, and the United States Supreme Court decision in Texaco, Inc., et al. v. Short, et al., 454 U.S. 516 (1982)
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Minn. Stat. § 93.55 subd. 1a. This is the only provision on this record where a state statute names a case that is also on this record. Texaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U.S. 516, was read here from the bound United States Reports and is on the federal record and on the dormancy page, where it answers whether a state is allowed to extinguish a mineral interest for a failure to record without giving the owner individual advance notice. Minnesota's legislature evidently reached the same question, decided the answer was yes, and wrote the citation into the statute as the authority its own commissioner must invoke. Two limits on what that establishes. It tells you why the legislature thought the scheme survives a due process challenge; it does not tell you that any court has upheld THIS scheme, and no Minnesota decision on it has been read. And the caveat already recorded on the federal rule still applies: the Court in Texaco leaned on the two year grace period and the breadth of qualifying uses in the Indiana act before it, so where the line falls for a differently shaped statute is not established, and Minnesota's is differently shaped. The mining restriction is the practical protection: the state can put the interest to exploratory work while the case runs, but nothing can be taken out of the ground until a court has ruled.
A forfeited owner can recover the interest's fair market value from the state
verifiedAfter a mineral interest has forfeited, a person who claims to have owned it before the forfeiture may recover its fair market value, either as an alternative claim raised at the hearing on the order to show cause, or in a separate action commenced within six years after entry of judgment. The court determines ownership and value, the claim is then presented to the commissioner of management and budget, and the refund is appropriated from the general fund. The sum is the lesser of the value at forfeiture and the value at the bringing of the action, less the taxes, penalties, costs and interest that could have been collected in the meantime.
After the mineral interest has forfeited to the state pursuant to this section, a person claiming an ownership interest before the forfeiture may recover the fair market value of the interest
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Minn. Stat. § 93.55 subd. 4. Nothing else on this record does this. The five common law lapse states end the interest and pay nothing. Virginia's coal trust sends the MONEY to unclaimed property after five years while the interest stays put, which is money the owner had already earned rather than compensation for what they lost. Montana and Pennsylvania hold the proceeds for a missing owner for the same reason. Minnesota is the only state read here that takes the asset and then legislates a route to being paid for it. Three things temper it and all three are in the words. The valuation is the LESSER of two figures, not the greater. The taxes, penalties, costs and interest that could have been collected since the forfeiture come off the top. And the six year clock runs from entry of judgment, so an owner who never learned of the proceeding can lose the compensation claim the same way they lost the interest. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any claim under this subdivision has ever been brought or paid.
The defence is substantial compliance, and paying the tax is half of it
verifiedThe forfeiture is not absolute if the owner shows substantial compliance with the laws requiring the registration and taxation of severed mineral interests. That means two things together: that the recorder's or registrar's records specified the true ownership during the period the statement should have been recorded, or that probate, divorce, bankruptcy, mortgage foreclosure or other proceedings affecting the title were timely initiated and diligently pursued by the true owner in that period; and that all taxes relating to severed mineral interests were timely paid, including any that would have been due under the severed mineral interest tax had the interest been properly recorded.
that all taxes relating to severed mineral interests had been timely paid, including any taxes which would have been due and owing under section 273.165, subdivision 1, had the interest been properly recorded as required by section 93.52 within the time specified in this section
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Minn. Stat. § 93.55 subd. 2(b), with the definition of timely paid at subd. 2(c). Two things follow that a reader would not get from either section alone. First, this is one scheme spread across two chapters, and it can only be seen by reading them against each other: the registration requirement is in chapter 93 and the tax that decides the defence is in chapter 273. That is the same lesson Nebraska taught, where the tax roll section and the saving-acts section had to be read together, and it is the argument for reading a chapter rather than a section. Second, Minnesota and Nebraska answer the same question in opposite directions. Nebraska lists the acts that save an interest and paying the tax is not among them, so a Nebraska owner can be assessed, listed and paying and still lose it. Minnesota makes timely payment of the tax half of the defence. Note the demand this makes of an owner who never filed: the defence requires the tax to have been paid INCLUDING tax that would only have been due had they filed, so an owner outside the system entirely has to have been paying a bill the system never sent them.
A statement filed on time survives its own errors
verifiedA statement of severed mineral interests recorded within the time limits is validly and timely recorded even if the interest claimed does not correctly state the whole or fractional interest actually owned, even if it wrongly contained interests from more than one government section, even if it was not properly verified, and even if it was recorded with the county recorder when the property was registered or with the registrar of titles when it was not. The owner may record an amendment or supplement correcting any or all of those errors.
A statement of severed mineral interests which was recorded within the time limits specified by section 93.55 is validly and timely recorded even if the interest claimed by the owner does not correctly set forth the whole or fractional interest actually owned; the statement erroneously contained interests from more than one government section; the statement was not properly verified; or the interest, if registered property, was erroneously recorded with the county recorder, or, if the interest was not registered property, was recorded with the registrar of titles.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Minn. Stat. § 93.551. It matters more than a validation provision usually would, because it forgives exactly the four errors the section 93.52 requirements invite: getting the fraction wrong in a chain that has been divided among heirs for a century, putting more than one government section on one form, missing the verification, and filing in the wrong one of Minnesota's two registries. Any description of this state's forfeiture that leaves this section out overstates the risk to an owner who tried. What it does not forgive is being late, and it does not help an owner who never filed at all: the saving applies to a statement recorded within the time limits.
No dormant mineral act, and no statute anywhere that ends a mineral interest for non use
verifiedNothing read for this page can end a Mississippi mineral interest because its owner did nothing. That is a negative, so it is worth being exact about what was read rather than what was searched for. Four chapters were walked end to end through the mirror's own Previous and Next chain, and each of them is the chapter where such a rule would have to live. Chapter 1 of Title 89, land and conveyances, sixty-two sections, DOES NOT CONTAIN THE WORD MINERAL ONCE. Chapter 5 of Title 89, recording, thirty-two sections, contains it only at 89-5-23, which requires a dead oil, gas and mineral lease to be cancelled off the record and has nothing to do with losing an interest. Chapter 12 of Title 89, the unclaimed property act, thirty-two sections, never names mineral proceeds at all, which is separately significant and is set out elsewhere on this page. Chapter 1 of Title 15, Limitations of Actions and Prevention of Frauds, forty-three sections, is where Mississippi keeps every limitation period including adverse possession, and it does not mention minerals either. The word DORMANT appears in none of the roughly two hundred and fifty sections read across those four chapters and the three oil and gas chapters. There is no statement of claim to file, no clock to restart, no register of dormant interests, and no procedure by which a surface owner can serve notice and take the minerals. Compare the immediate neighbours on this record. Tennessee extinguishes an interest unused for twenty years. Arkansas has no dormant act either, but its nearest miss is a twenty-year cotenant forfeiture that carves minerals out expressly; Mississippi has no equivalent provision to carve them out of. What remains here is the ordinary law of adverse possession, which needs somebody in possession, and which is set out separately below.
Ten (10) years' actual adverse possession by any person claiming to be the owner for that time of any land, uninterruptedly continued for ten (10) years by occupancy, descent, conveyance, or otherwise, in whatever way such occupancy may have commenced or continued, shall vest in every actual occupant or possessor of such land a full and complete title.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04. The quote is Miss. Code 15-1-13(1), given here because it is the only mechanism that survives the negative, and it is set out in full in its own rule below. The negative itself rests on four chapters walked end to end, 89-1 (62 sections), 89-5 (32), 89-12 (32) and 15-1 (43), each confirmed by the walk reaching the chapter boundary rather than stopping early. It does not rest on any keyword search of an index, and the count of appearances of the word mineral in each chapter was taken from the pulled text of that chapter, not from a site search.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on all 468 chapter titles in the code
verifiedRevised Statutes of Missouri, chapter index
Nothing read for this record ends a Missouri mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, so there is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anybody to serve. There is also nothing in Missouri's conveyancing chapter that touches minerals at all: chapter 442, Titles and Conveyance of Real Estate, contains no occurrence of mineral, sever, dormant, abandon or marketable anywhere in its section titles. What can still move a Missouri mineral interest is what can move one anywhere, a conveyance or a tax sale, together with adverse possession, which has its own ten year rule on this page, and with the peculiar three year prospector's right in chapter 444 that a landowner creates by failing to post their terms.
No such instrument in writing shall be valid, except between the parties thereto, and such as have actual notice thereof, until the same shall be deposited with the recorder for record.
Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and not by any search. The instrument is the chapter index of the entire Revised Statutes of Missouri, fetched from the Revisor's own home page and parsed into chapter number and chapter title pairs: 468 entries. The words DORMANT, SEVER, MARKETABLE and MINERAL appear in none of the 468. The controls are what make those zeros mean something: MINING returns exactly 1, chapter 293 Mining Regulations; ABANDON returns 1, chapter 241 Swamplands, Islands and Abandoned Riverbeds; OIL AND GAS returns 1, chapter 259 Oil and Gas Production; CONVEYANCE returns 2, chapters 428 and 442; LIMITATION returns 1, chapter 516; and UNCLAIMED returns 1, chapter 447. Note that chapter 444, Rights and Duties of Miners and Mine Owners, does not answer to the MINING control because its title says MINERS, which is a reminder that a title-level count catches what a legislature chose to call things. Two chapters were then read at section level as a second layer: chapter 442, Titles and Conveyance of Real Estate, returns MINERAL 0, SEVER 0, DORMAN 0, ABANDON 0, MARKETABLE 0 and ROOT OF TITLE 0 against controls of CONVEY 22 and RECORD 9; and chapter 516, Statutes of Limitation, returns the same five zeros. THE LIMIT, and it is the limit every enumeration on this record carries: this is a title-level count over the whole code plus a section-title read of the two chapters where such an act would most likely sit, so it cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose title does not disclose it, and no Missouri decision was read.
Montana has no dormant mineral statute
verifiedMontana Code Annotated, table of contents and section indexes
Montana has no dormant mineral interest act. No period of non use lapses a severed Montana mineral interest, there is no notice of intent to preserve to file and no notice of lapse to record. Where the owner of an interest cannot be found, Montana's answer is the opposite of extinguishment: a district court appoints a trustee to lease the interest on the absent owner's behalf and hold the money for them.
Checked July 30, 2026. Established by enumerating the code rather than from recollection, and by a different instrument from the ones used for Texas and New Mexico, because Montana's statute site has no full text search that could be reached. Every section heading in Title 70 (Property), Title 82 (Minerals, Oil, and Gas) and Title 15 (Taxation) was collected on 2026-07-30 by walking the Legislature's own chapter, part and section indexes: 954 headings in Title 70, 400 in Title 82 and 2,164 in Title 15, 3,518 in total. Not one contains the word dormant. The instrument was validated before the negative was relied on, which is the step that makes a zero mean something: the same enumeration returns three headings containing the word mineral, including the part titled Trusts for Unlocatable Mineral Owners, so the index does surface mineral-specific provisions where they exist. Every Title 82 heading containing terminat, abandon, forfeit or lapse was then read and none concerns a severed mineral interest: they are about abandoned wells and their reclamation, abandoned mine sites, bond forfeiture, permit termination, and the relocation of an abandoned mining claim. One of them is worth separating out because it is the thing most often confused with this question. Section 82-1-201 requires release of record on the forfeiture, cancellation or expiration of a lease, which is about an oil and gas lease ending, not about the mineral estate underneath it. What this does not exclude is a lapse provision whose section heading uses none of those words, or one sitting outside the three titles enumerated. Whether a severed Montana interest can be lost by adverse possession is a separate question and is not answered by this rule.
Twenty-three years, and three things that count as holding on
verifiedA 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.
A severed mineral interest shall be abandoned unless the record owner of such mineral interest has within the twenty-three years immediately prior to the filing of the action provided for in sections 57-228 to 57-231, exercised publicly the right of ownership
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.
Nothing happens until the surface owner sues in equity, and then the interest vests in the surface
verifiedThe owner or owners of the surface from which a mineral interest has been severed may sue in equity, in the county where the land or part of it lies, on behalf of themselves and any other surface owners, praying for the termination and extinguishment of the severed mineral interest and its cancellation of record. Everyone having or appearing to have any interest in the severed mineral interest must be named as a defendant, and where they are not known and cannot be ascertained they may be proceeded against as unknown defendants. If the court finds the interest abandoned it enters judgment terminating and extinguishing it, cancelling it of record, and vesting the title in the owners of the surface from which it was severed, in the proportions in which they own the surface.
If the court shall find that the severed mineral interest has been abandoned, it shall enter judgment terminating and extinguishing it, canceling it of record, and vesting the title thereto in the owner or owners of the interest in the surface from which it was originally severed in the proportions in which they own such interest in the surface.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 57-228 and 57-230, with the grace provision at 57-231. This is a fifth distinct procedure for ending a mineral interest and it is the most demanding one on this record for the person who benefits. Ohio requires the surface owner to serve certified mail and record an affidavit. North Dakota requires newspaper publication for three weeks. Michigan requires nothing at all of the surface owner and dates the vesting to the abandonment. Indiana requires nothing of anybody. Nebraska requires the surface owner to file and win a suit in equity, naming every person with or appearing to have an interest, and nothing happens to the mineral interest until a court says so. That cuts both ways for a mineral owner: no interest is quietly lost, and an owner who is served can appear and prove one of the saving acts. Section 57-231 is worth noting alongside Texaco v. Short on this site's federal record: for two years after October 23, 1967 an owner who simply entered an appearance and asserted the interest was deemed to have timely and publicly exercised ownership, which is the same kind of grace period the Supreme Court leaned on when it upheld Indiana's act. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether Nebraska's act has been challenged, and what the court does where the surface itself is in several hands.
Nothing lapses for non use, and the whole conveyances chapter never uses the word mineral
verifiedNRS ch. 111, Estates in Property and Conveyancing, read in full
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act was found in Nevada. There is no period of inactivity for a severed interest to survive, nothing its owner must record to keep it alive, and no notice anybody has to answer. What can still move an interest here is what can move one anywhere, together with one route that is specific to Nevada and runs through the tax roll rather than through any lapse: a patented mine or claim that becomes the county's property for unpaid taxes can end up deeded to somebody else.
Checked August 1, 2026. Established by reading, not by a search, and by reading the FULL TEXT rather than an index, which is a stronger instrument than this record usually gets. The whole of NRS chapter 111, Estates in Property and Conveyancing, was fetched and read on 2026-08-01: 203,318 characters of extracted text carrying 453 section references. Occurrences of mineral 0, dormant 0, lapse 0, marketable 0, root of title 0, severed 0, coal 0. The controls are strong and present: conveyance 114, recorded 81. NRS chapter 517, Mining Claims, Mill Sites and Tunnel Rights, was read the same way: 46,833 characters, 39 sections, dormant 0, marketable 0, and the single occurrence of lapse is not about mineral interests. BE PRECISE ABOUT THE LIMIT. Two chapters were read exhaustively and Nevada's other titles were not, and no Nevada decision was read. This is a strong negative about the two chapters where such a provision would live, not a proof about Nevada law entire.
No dormant mineral act, no marketable record title act, and no title of the statutes named for minerals at all
verifiedNew Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated, table of contents
Nothing read for this record ends a New Hampshire mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, so there is no period of inactivity to survive, nothing to record that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anybody to serve. The more useful finding for anybody about to go searching is structural. New Hampshire has no title of its statutes named for minerals, mining, oil or gas. Extraction is dealt with in two places that are not about minerals as such: RSA 155-E, Local Regulation of Excavations, which sits in the public safety and welfare title, and RSA 72-B, the excavation tax, which sits in the taxation title. There is a chapter called Mining and Reclamation at RSA 12-E in the title about the state and its government. What can still move a New Hampshire interest is what can move one anywhere, a conveyance or a tax sale, together with adverse possession on the twenty year rule dealt with separately on this page.
No action for the recovery of real estate shall be brought after 20 years from the time the right to recover first accrued to the party claiming it or to some persons under whom the party claims.
Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and not by any search. Two layers. FIRST, the whole code at title level: the table of contents of the Revised Statutes Annotated was fetched and parsed into 67 title numbers and names, and MINERAL, MINING, OIL and GAS appear in none of them. New Hampshire's titles run from The State and its Government through Boundaries Fences and Common Fields, Conveyances and Mortgages of Realty, Homesteads, Water Management and Protection, and end at Planning and Zoning; there is no minerals title and no natural resources title. SECOND, title XLVIII, Conveyances and Mortgages of Realty, which is where a dormant mineral act or a marketable title act would be codified: its six chapters are Conveyances of Realty and Interests Therein, Registers of Deeds, the Uniform Real Property Electronic Recording Act, Mortgages of Realty, Unit Ownership of Real Property, and Foreclosure Consultants and Pre-Foreclosure Conveyances. Chapter 477 was then fetched whole, 94,985 characters, and counted: DORMANT returns 0 and MARKETABLE returns 0, against controls of RECORD 78. MINERAL returns exactly 1 and SEVER 1, and both were inspected: the single MINERAL hit is in a definition of acts detrimental to retaining land for agricultural use, listing the removal of loam, sod, peat, gravel, soil, rock or other mineral substance, and it is not about ownership at all. THE LIMIT: a name-level count over the code plus a whole-chapter read of the conveyancing chapter cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose title does not disclose it, and no New Hampshire decision was read. The quote attached is the general limitation on real actions, because there is no dormancy provision to quote and twenty years is the only outside limit found.
Nothing ends a New Jersey mineral interest for non use, and no statute read here even uses the word dormant
verifiedNew Jersey has no dormant mineral interests act, no marketable title act and no root of title. That is a negative, so what was read matters more than what was concluded. Four chapters were walked end to end through the mirror's own Previous and Next chain, and each is a chapter where such a rule would have to live. Chapter 3 of Title 46, Estates and Interests in Real Property and Alienation Thereof in General, thirty-eight sections. Chapter 26A of Title 46, the Recording Act, twelve sections. Chapter 30B of Title 46, the Uniform Unclaimed Property Act, one hundred and thirty-four sections. And chapter 14 of Title 2A, Limitations of Actions, forty-four sections, which is where New Jersey keeps every limitation period it has, including possession. Two hundred and twenty-eight sections. THE WORDS DORMANT, MARKETABLE TITLE AND ROOT OF TITLE APPEAR IN NONE OF THEM, and the word MINERAL APPEARS ZERO TIMES IN ALL FORTY-FOUR SECTIONS OF 2A:14. Every count was taken from the pulled text of the chapters, never from a site search. There is no statement of claim to file, no clock to restart, no register of dormant interests, and no procedure by which a surface owner serves notice and takes the minerals. All forty chapter names of Title 46 were also enumerated and none is named dormant, mineral, marketable title or lapse, but that is an index and it is not what carries this: Connecticut has the uniform dormant mineral interests act inside a chapter called Land Titles, and the word mineral appears in none of Connecticut's 1,114 chapter names and ninety times inside one of them. What CAN move a New Jersey interest is what can move any interest in land, and it is set out separately below: possession, and it is the longest wait on this record.
Thirty years' actual possession of any real estate excepting woodlands or uncultivated tracts, and 60 years' actual possession of woodlands or uncultivated tracts, uninterruptedly continued by occupancy, descent, conveyance or otherwise, shall, in whatever way or manner such possession might have commenced or have been continued, vest a full and complete right and title in every actual possessor or occupier of such real estate, woodlands or uncultivated tracts.
Checked August 5, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04. The quote is N.J.S.A. 2A:14-30, given because it is the only mechanism that survives the negative, and it is set out in full in its own rule below. The negative rests on 46:3 (38 sections), 46:26A (12), 46:30B (134) and 2A:14 (44) walked end to end, each staged file confirmed to carry its own END OF CHAIN line rather than merely not denying it was cut short. Eight section numbers the chains skipped were checked on the BODY and not on the status code, because this host serves its 404 with HTTP 200: 46:30B-35, 46:30B-54, 46:30B-55, 46:26A-13, 46:3-34, 2A:14-18, 13:10-3 and 13:10-4 are all absent, and neighbouring sections were probed and returned with an h1 echoing the number asked for. The last three were caught by the 2026-08-05 audit rather than the build, and 2A:14-18 is the instructive one: its address serves not a 404 but the TITLE LANDING PAGE, real HTML with no statute in it, which is a third body shape this host uses for a section that does not exist.
New Mexico has no dormant mineral statute
verifiedNew Mexico Compilation Commission, full text search of New Mexico statutes
New Mexico has no dormant mineral interest act. No period of non use lapses a severed New Mexico mineral interest, there is no notice of intent to preserve to file and no notice of lapse to record.
Checked July 30, 2026. Established from the official statutory database rather than from recollection. nmonesource.com is the New Mexico Compilation Commission's site, which brands itself the Official Legal Publisher of the State of New Mexico and which the Legislature's own site links to as New Mexico Law (Statutes). Its full text search was run across its collections on 2026-07-30 and returned zero results for the phrase "dormant mineral", including zero in the New Mexico Laws and Court Rules collection. A search for "abandoned mineral" returned one result across all databases and zero in New Mexico Laws and Court Rules, so no statute uses that phrasing either. The instrument was validated before the negative was relied on, which is the step that makes a zero meaningful: the control phrase "surface owner" returned 292 results across all databases, 23 in the appellate reports and 5 in the laws and court rules collection, so the search does find text when text exists. What this does not exclude is a lapse provision using wording neither probe would catch, and the site's section text could not be read to check chapter by chapter the way Colorado's and Texas's negatives were.
Nothing found in the property laws or the mineral resources article ends an interest for non use
verifiedN.Y. Envtl. Conserv. Law § 23-0301
Nothing read for this record lapses, extinguishes or reverts a severed New York mineral interest for non use. There is no dormant mineral act among the articles of the Real Property Law or the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law, and none among the sections of the Environmental Conservation Law article that governs mineral resources. There is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim or notice of intent to preserve to record, and no notice of lapse for a surface owner to file. What New York legislates about instead is what happens when a well is drilled over land whose owners have not all signed, and what may not be drilled at all.
It is hereby declared to be in the public interest to regulate the development, production and utilization of natural resources of oil and gas in this state in such a manner as will prevent waste
Checked July 31, 2026. THE INSTRUMENT BEHIND THIS NEGATIVE, and its limits, which are real and are stated rather than glossed. Three bodies of law were enumerated on the Senate's own site. The article of the Environmental Conservation Law headed Mineral Resources was enumerated to SECTION level across all thirteen of its titles: 56 sections. Neither "dormant" nor "lapse" appears in any of those 56 headings, and neither does "tax". The Real Property Law and the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law were enumerated to ARTICLE level only: 26 and 27 article headings, 53 in all. None contains "dormant", "lapse", "mineral" or "marketable"; the single heading containing "abandon" is about abandoned manufactured homes. THAT IS A WEAKER INSTRUMENT than the section-level enumerations this record has run for other states, and it is weaker in a specific way: a dormancy provision sitting inside an article whose heading does not mention minerals would not be caught. The two articles where such a thing would most plausibly sit were identified and neither is one: Real Property article 9 is Recording Instruments Affecting Real Property, and Real Property Actions article 15 is the Action to Compel the Determination of a Claim to Real Property, which is New York's quiet title vehicle rather than a lapse statute. WHAT THIS CANNOT EXCLUDE, beyond the above: any judge-made doctrine, since nothing was fetched from a New York court.
Nine separate statutes extinguished ancient severed mineral claims, and eight of the nine windows are shut
verifiedN.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.1, Certain ancient mineral claims extinguished in certain counties
Between 1965 and 1985 the General Assembly passed the same statute nine times, at G.S. 1-42.1 through 1-42.9, working through the state a group of counties at a time. Each one takes a person who has an unbroken chain of record title to the SURFACE for a stated period, where a severed oil, gas or mineral interest is not being mined, drilled, worked or operated, is not in the adverse possession of another, or whose record holder has not listed it for ad valorem tax for a stated number of years, and gives that person a marketable title to the surface free of the mineral interest. Any such interest founded on a reservation or exception in an instrument that old is then declared null and void. The only defence was a sworn notice recorded in the register of deeds within two years of the date the section names. Those windows closed on 1 September 1967, 1 September 1973, 1 September 1976, 1 September 1979, 1 September 1981, 1 July 1983, 1 September 1984 and 1 January 1988. A North Carolina owner in a covered county whose interest went in one of those sweeps cannot cure it now, and nothing in the record would tell them so.
Such marketable title shall be held by such person and shall be taken by his successors in interest free and clear of any and all such fee simple oil, gas or mineral interests in such area of land founded upon any reservation or exception contained in an instrument conveying the surface estate in fee simple which was executed or recorded fifty (50) years or more prior to September 1, 1965, and such oil, gas or mineral interests are hereby declared to be null and void and of no effect whatever at law or in equity
Checked August 2, 2026. The whole of chapter 1, Article 4 was fetched from the General Assembly's own site on 2026-08-02, 67,845 bytes returning 55,708 characters of text, and all nine sections were read end to end. Nothing else on this record works this way. Every other extinguishment here can still be answered by filing something today, because the clock either rolls or has not started; these are one-shot historical sweeps with a fixed door that shut. The root of title is fifty years in 1-42.1 through 1-42.8 and thirty years in 1-42.9, and the tax-listing limb is ten years in the early sections and five in 1-42.9. Read the trigger carefully, because it is not the same in all of them: 1-42.1(a) joins the not-being-worked limb and the not-listed-for-tax limb with OR, so either one is enough, while 1-42.9(a) joins them with AND, so both must hold. Three further things are worth knowing and are on this page rather than buried. The sections exclude governmental claims, State or federal, and claims by reason of unexpired oil, gas or mineral releases. Each one recites its own purpose as facilitating land title transactions. And 1-42.9(f) directs that the date 1984 be substituted for the date 1983 each time it appears in the section, when 1983 does not appear in the section at all as codified; that is quoted here and not resolved. No North Carolina decision was read, and how these sections have actually been applied is not known to this record.
Which counties the extinguishment reached is not settled by the words, and the difference is a whole subsection
verifiedN.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.1(d), the county limitation
The nine sections limit themselves to counties in two different ways and the difference decides who was affected. In G.S. 1-42.1 through 1-42.4 the limiting sentence is the last sentence of subsection (d), and it says the provisions of THIS SUBSECTION apply to the listed counties. Subsection (d) is the duty to list the interest for ad valorem tax, to file notice, and to have the county commissioners publish in a newspaper. The extinguishment itself is in subsections (a) to (c), which say nothing about counties. In G.S. 1-42.5 through 1-42.8 the limiting sentence instead says this SECTION, or this act, applies only to the named county, which reaches the extinguishment too. And G.S. 1-42.9 carries no county sentence at all, and its catchline drops the words in certain counties that the others carry. So on the face of the text it is not clear whether the first four sections voided mineral interests statewide or only in the counties their subsection (d) names.
The provisions of this subsection shall apply to the following counties: Anson, Buncombe, Durham, Franklin, Guilford, Hoke, Jackson, Montgomery, Person, Richmond, Swain, Transylvania, Union, Wake and Warren.
Checked August 2, 2026. Read on 2026-08-02 across all nine sections. The counties named, in order: 1-42.1(d) fifteen, quoted above; 1-42.2(d) twenty five, adding Rowan, Catawba, Davidson, Haywood, Iredell, Madison, Moore, Robeson, Scotland and Yancey to most of the first list; 1-42.3(d) twenty more, Alleghany, Burke, Caldwell, Cherokee, Clay, Cleveland, Gaston, Gates, Graham, Halifax, Henderson, Macon, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Randolph, Stanly, Surry, Watauga and Wilkes; then Ashe, Avery, Alleghany again, Chatham and Rutherford one at a time. A section's catchline is not the statute, which is why the words in certain counties in the heading of 1-42.1 cannot settle this. This record takes no view on which reading is right, because settling it needs North Carolina case law and none was fetched. It is stated here rather than resolved because a reader whose land is not in a named county deserves to know the question exists, and because a page that quietly picked one reading would be asserting something nobody read.
In Avery County alone the clock rolls, and it has never stopped
verifiedN.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.5, Additional ancient mineral claims extinguished in Avery County
G.S. 1-42.5 is the one section of the nine that fixes no calendar date anywhere in it. A person with an unbroken chain of record title to the surface for at least thirty years, where the severed interest is not being mined, drilled, worked or operated and is not in the adverse possession of another, takes a marketable title free of any mineral interest depending on a reservation or exception in an instrument recorded before that thirty year period, and those interests are declared null and void. The notice that preserves an interest must be recorded WITHIN THAT THIRTY YEAR PERIOD rather than by a date the statute names. Because nothing anchors it to 1981, the section works as a rolling thirty year marketable title rule against severed minerals, and it is live today in one county.
Such marketable title shall be held by such person and shall be taken by his successors in interest free and clear of any and all such fee simple oil, gas or mineral interest in such area of land, the existence of which depends upon any reservation or exception contained in an instrument conveying the surface estate in fee simple which was recorded prior to such 30-year period, and such oil, gas or mineral interests are hereby declared null and void and of no effect whatever at law or in equity
Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 1-42.5 on 2026-08-02, the section in full, and compared line by line against the other eight because the absence of a date is the kind of thing that is easy to miss. Two other differences from its siblings: it drops the ad valorem tax listing limb from its trigger entirely, so only the not-being-worked and not-adversely-possessed conditions matter, and its notice must state the name of the surface owner without the words if known that the other sections use. Its subsection (d) required the county commissioners to publish notice within ninety days after ratification and again within ninety days before 30 June 1982, in newspapers published in or circulating in Avery, Burke, Mitchell and Watauga, which is a wider publication footprint than the county the section applies to. The limiting sentence says the provisions of this SECTION apply to Avery, so unlike the first four sections there is no ambiguity about reach here. Enacted by 1981, c. 329, s. 1, the same session law whose section 2 amended 1-42.3. Whether any Avery County interest has actually been extinguished under it is not known to this record.
The marketable record title act saves minerals in five words, and never mentions them again
verifiedN.C. Gen. Stat. s. 47B-3, Exceptions
North Carolina has a Real Property Marketable Title Act at chapter 47B, and it is the ordinary shape: thirty years of record title gives a marketable record title, and every right, estate, interest, claim or charge depending on anything that happened before that thirty year period is declared null and void, whether held by a natural person or a corporation, private or governmental, under a disability or not. Its section 47B-4 adds that no disability or lack of knowledge of any kind delays the commencement of or suspends the running of the period. Then section 47B-3 lists fourteen exceptions the act does not touch, and the fifth of them reads, in its entirety, rights of any owners of mineral rights. That is the only occurrence of the word mineral in the whole chapter.
(5) Rights of any owners of mineral rights.
Checked August 2, 2026. The whole of chapter 47B was fetched and read on 2026-08-02, all nine sections, 14,016 characters of text, and the word mineral occurs exactly once in it, in the exception quoted. Read that against Florida and Vermont, whose equivalent acts contain ZERO occurrences of mineral and therefore reach severed minerals precisely because they never carve them out. Same instrument, opposite result, and one line of text between them. The exception here is also drafted more narrowly than Utah's, which protects not only the interest but the development, mining, production and access rights that go with it; North Carolina's five words say nothing about access. Two other exceptions in the same list matter to a mineral owner and are easy to miss: (3) preserves the rights of a person in present, actual and open possession of the property while that possession lasts, and (12) takes land registered under the Torrens Law in chapter 43 out of the act altogether. Chapter 43 was not read. Neither was any North Carolina decision on chapter 47B, and the relationship between this act and the nine extinguishment sections in chapter 1, which were being enacted on both sides of it in 1973, was not read and is not asserted here.
No dormant mineral act, and nothing running today can end an interest for simply not using it
verifiedN.C. Gen. Stat. s. 47B-1, Declaration of policy and statement of purpose
Nothing read for this record ends a North Carolina mineral interest because the owner did not use it. There is no dormant mineral act. The nine extinguishment sections are not dormancy statutes in the usual sense either: they ask what is in the record and whether the interest was listed for tax, not whether the owner did anything with it, and eight of the nine have closed. The marketable record title act expressly spares minerals. So outside Avery County there is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim that would mean anything, and no notice of lapse for a surface owner to serve.
It is the purpose of the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina to provide that if a person claims title to real property under a chain of record title for 30 years, and no other person has filed a notice of any claim of interest in the real property during the 30-year period, then all conflicting claims based upon any title transaction prior to the 30-year period shall be extinguished.
Checked August 2, 2026. Established by enumeration with controls on 2026-08-02, in two instruments, and neither is a search. FIRST, the chapter index of the entire General Statutes was fetched from the General Assembly's own table of contents and enumerated: 396 chapter titles, of which not one contains dormant, mineral or sever, against controls of mine 4, quarr 1, oil 4, marketable 1, property 8 and water 6. Note why the controls matter here: the word mining scores zero across all 396 titles while chapter 74 is titled Mines and Quarries, so a term count without controls would have produced a confident wrong answer. SECOND, the six chapters where such a provision would actually sit were each fetched whole and counted: chapter 1 Civil Procedure at 828,747 characters and 767 catchlines, chapter 47 Probate and Registration at 268,933 and 200, chapter 47B at 14,016 and 8, chapter 74 Mines and Quarries at 128,467 and 73, chapter 105 Taxation at 2,168,057 and 908, and chapter 113 Conservation and Development at 783,643 and 322. The word dormant appears NOT ONCE in those 4,191,863 characters, against controls in the same corpus of oil 267, gas 263, surface owner 54 and royalty 13 in chapter 113, severance tax 14 and royalty 40 in chapter 105, and mineral 121 and severed 17 in chapter 1. State the limit plainly: this is a title-level enumeration of the whole code plus a full-text read of six chapters, not a section-level enumeration of all 396, and no North Carolina decision was read, so it says nothing about judge-made doctrine.
Twenty years unused and the interest reverts to the surface owner
verifiedA 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.
Any mineral interest is, if unused for a period of twenty years immediately preceding the first publication of the notice required by section 38-18.1-06, deemed to be abandoned, unless a statement of claim is recorded in accordance with section 38-18.1-04. Title to the abandoned mineral interest vests in the owner or owners of the surface estate in the land in or under which the mineral interest is located 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.
Six things count as using a mineral interest
verifiedA North Dakota mineral interest is deemed used when minerals are produced under it, when operations for injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal are conducted, when solid minerals are produced from a common vein or seam by the owners, when the interest is subject to a recorded lease, mortgage, assignment or conveyance, when it is subject to a recorded pooling or unitization order or agreement, or when a proper statement of claim is recorded.
The mineral interest on any tract is subject to a lease, mortgage, assignment, or conveyance of the mineral interest recorded in the office of the recorder in the county in which the mineral interest is located.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 38-18.1-03(1), which lists the six uses at subdivisions (a) to (f). The quoted one is chosen because it is the one most mineral owners will actually be able to rely on: an interest that has been leased, mortgaged, assigned or conveyed, and the instrument recorded with the county recorder, has been used for the purposes of this chapter even though nothing was ever drilled. Note the recording requirement attaches to the pooling limb too: an order or agreement to pool or unitize counts only if it is recorded in the county where the interest is located.
Money paid into an account for an owner nobody can find is not use
verifiedPaying royalties, bonus or any other money into an interest-bearing, trust or escrow account on behalf of a person who cannot be located does not satisfy the use requirement, so a North Dakota interest is not preserved by money accumulating for its owner. An account of that kind that has existed for three years is deemed abandoned property.
The payment of royalties, bonus payments, or any other payment to a named or unnamed interest-bearing account, trust account, escrow account, or any similar type of account on behalf of a person who cannot be located does not satisfy the requirements of this section and the mineral interest is not deemed to be used for purposes of this section.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 38-18.1-03(2). This is the statutory equivalent of the point the Supreme Court of Ohio had to decide as case law, that money moving under a lease is not the same as using the interest, and North Dakota answers it in the statute instead. The same subsection provides that interest on such an account must be credited to the account and may not be used for any other purpose, that an account of that kind in existence for three years is deemed abandoned property and must be treated as abandoned property under chapter 47-30.2, and that a lease given by a trustee remains valid. Chapter 47-30.2 was not read.
The claim is due before the twenty years end, with a sixty day rescue after that
verifiedA North Dakota statement of claim must normally be recorded by the mineral owner before the end of the twenty year period, naming the owner and address, the land and the type of interest. Failure to do so is not fatal if, within sixty days after the first publication of notice, the record owner records either a statement of claim or documentation that a qualifying use occurred during the twenty years.
Failure to record the statement of claim within the time period provided in section 38-18.1-04 will not cause a mineral interest to be extinguished if:
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at sections 38-18.1-04 and 38-18.1-05. The ordering is the practical difference from Ohio: North Dakota's saving document is due before the clock runs out, and the sixty day window is a rescue after publication rather than the primary route. Section 38-18.1-05(2) provides a separate route for a person who is not the record owner, who may within the same sixty days file an affidavit or declaration under oath explaining the factual and legal basis for asserting title, accompanied by supporting documentation or an explanation why it is unavailable. A joint tenant, but not a tenant in common, may record a claim on behalf of the others. A statement of claim filed after July 31, 2009 by someone other than the record owner is not effective unless it references the name of the record owner under whom that person claims.
Notice is by newspaper, and the statute says how hard the surface owner must look
verifiedA North Dakota surface owner intending to take a lapsed mineral interest must publish notice once a week for three weeks in the official county newspaper, and must also mail a copy to the mineral owner within ten days of the last publication if the address is of record or can be determined on reasonable inquiry. Reasonable inquiry is defined by the statute and has four specified searches.
To constitute a reasonable inquiry as provided in subsection 2, the owner or owners of the surface estate or the owner's authorized agent must conduct a search of:
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 38-18.1-06. The four searches at subsection 6 are the county recorder's records for any of the statutory uses, the clerk of court's records for judgments, liens or probate records identifying the owner, the social security death index for the last known residence of a deceased owner, and one or more public internet databases to locate the owner or any known heirs, with an express exemption from having to use private fee databases. This level of statutory detail about the diligence owed to an absent mineral owner has no counterpart in any other state on this record. The notice must name the record owner of the mineral interest, describe the land, and name the surface owners giving notice, and a copy plus an affidavit of service must be recorded, which is prima facie evidence in any legal proceeding that notice was given.
The surface owner can quiet title, and a lessee keeps what it paid even if that is undone
verifiedAfter completing the notice procedure a North Dakota surface owner may bring a quiet title action and obtain judgment perfecting title to the mineral interest, on evidence that every procedure was followed and a reasonable inquiry made. Such a judgment is conclusive except for fraud, misrepresentation or other misconduct, and a lessee who leased from that surface owner is deemed a bona fide purchaser whose lease survives if the judgment is later vacated.
A judgment obtained by the owner or owners of the surface estate in compliance with this section is deemed conclusive except for fraud, misrepresentation, or other misconduct.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 38-18.1-06.1, which the chapter heads Perfecting title in surface owner. The action is brought in the district court of the county where the minerals are located in the same manner as a quiet title action under chapter 32-17, which was not read. Subsection 4 provides that a lessee taking from a surface owner who holds such a judgment is deemed a bona fide purchaser, its lease remains effective if the judgment is later vacated, and it is not liable to any third party for bonus, royalties or other proceeds paid to the surface owner before that. Subsection 5 lets the surface owner keep those proceeds too, absent fraud or misrepresentation. The combined effect is worth stating plainly to a mineral owner: once this judgment is entered and the minerals leased, unwinding it does not necessarily return the money.
A severed mineral interest can be deemed abandoned and vested in the surface owner
verifiedOhio 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.
Any mineral interest held by any person, other than the owner of the surface of the lands subject to the interest, shall be deemed abandoned and vested in the owner of the surface of the lands subject to the interest if the requirements established in division (E) of this section are satisfied and none of the following applies
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.
Six things in the last twenty years stop an interest being abandoned
verifiedAn Ohio mineral interest is not abandoned if, within the twenty years before notice is served or published, any one of six things happened: a recorded title transaction affecting the interest, actual production or withdrawal, use in underground gas storage, a drilling or mining permit issued to the holder with an affidavit recorded, a recorded claim to preserve, or the creation of a separate tax parcel number for the interest.
Within the twenty years immediately preceding the date on which notice is served or published under division (E) of this section, one or more of the following has occurred:
Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the same section. The six events are at divisions (B)(3)(a) to (f) and each carries its own conditions worth reading in the original: the title transaction must have been filed or recorded with the county recorder; production counts if it is from the lands, from lands under a lease the interest is subject to, from a mine partly beneath the lands, or from lands pooled or unitized under sections 1509.26 to 1509.28 provided the pooling instrument or order was recorded; the drilling or mining permit only counts if an affidavit naming the permit holder, number, type and a legal description was recorded under section 5301.252; and the separate tax parcel number must appear in both the county auditor's tax list and the county treasurer's duplicate tax list. The practical reading for a mineral owner is that ordinary paperwork counts, so an interest that has been inherited and recorded, or leased and the lease recorded, is not dormant merely because no well was ever drilled.
One recorded claim preserves the interest, and it can be repeated forever
verifiedAn Ohio mineral interest can be preserved indefinitely from abandonment by any of the six preserving events, including by successive filings of a claim to preserve. A claim to preserve is a recorded notice stating the nature of the interest, complying with the marketable title requirements, and saying that the holder intends to preserve rather than abandon the interest.
A mineral interest may be preserved indefinitely from being deemed abandoned under division (B) of this section by the occurrence of any of the circumstances described in division (B)(3) of this section, including, but not limited to, successive filings of claims to preserve mineral interests under division (C) of this section.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the same section. This is the answer to the question an Ohio mineral owner actually needs, and it is the reason the Ohio act is not as alarming as its headline: the defence is a single recorded document and it can be renewed without limit. Division (C)(1) sets out what the claim must say, division (C)(2) provides that a complying claim preserves the rights of all holders of a mineral interest in the same lands, and division (C)(3) lets a holder of an underground gas storage interest preserve a whole field by one claim defining its boundaries. Division (D)(2) adds that filing a claim to preserve does not affect a lessor's separate right to obtain forfeiture of an oil or gas lease under section 5301.332, which was not read.
The surface owner has to serve notice and record an affidavit, and the holder gets sixty days
verifiedBefore an Ohio mineral interest vests in the surface owner, the surface owner must serve notice of intent to declare it abandoned on each holder by certified mail, or publish it if service cannot be completed, and then record an affidavit of abandonment at least thirty and not more than sixty days later. The holder has sixty days from that notice to record either a claim to preserve or an affidavit identifying a preserving event.
Serve notice by certified mail, return receipt requested, to each holder or each holder's successors or assignees, at the last known address of each, of the owner's intent to declare the mineral interest abandoned.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the same section. Divisions (F) and (G) prescribe exactly what the notice and the affidavit must contain, including in the notice a statement attesting that none of the preserving events has occurred in the preceding twenty years. Division (H)(1) gives the holder sixty days to record a claim to preserve or an affidavit identifying a preserving event, and requires the holder to notify the person who served the notice. Division (H)(2) then provides that if the holder does nothing, or files late, the surface owner records a notice of failure to file, and immediately after that is recorded the interest vests in the surface owner and the record of the mineral interest ceases to be notice to the public and may not be received in evidence in any Ohio court on the former holder's behalf. The deadlines are the whole game here: a holder who reads the certified letter and acts inside sixty days keeps the interest.
Coal is exempt from all of this, and everything else is not
verifiedOhio's marketable title sections may not be applied to bar or extinguish any interest in coal or the mining rights that go with it, and the Dormant Mineral Act repeats that exemption. There is no equivalent general exemption for other minerals, and where one interest covers both coal and non-coal minerals the non-coal part can be abandoned on its own.
Any right, title, estate, or interest in coal, and any mining or other rights pertinent to or exercisable in connection with any right, title, estate, or interest in coal;
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 5301.53, effective March 23, 1989 under Senate Bill 223 of the 117th General Assembly, which lists what sections 5301.47 to 5301.56 may not bar or extinguish. The list is coal, easements for railroad or public utility purposes, easements whose use is observable or evidenced by a physical facility, certain mortgages, government interests, and lessor or lessee rights but expressly "except as may be permitted under section 5301.56". What is not on that list is a general exemption for severed mineral or royalty interests, which is precisely what the equivalent Oklahoma statute does contain. That absence is why the Ohio act reaches oil and gas at all. Section 5301.56(B)(1) restates the coal exemption and adds that where a mineral interest includes both coal and minerals that are not coal, the interests that are not in coal may be deemed abandoned and vest in the surface owner. Section 5301.56(B)(2) exempts interests held by the United States, the state, or their subdivisions and agencies.
Nothing lapsed automatically, and the notice procedure governs old claims too
verifiedThe Supreme Court of Ohio has held that dormant mineral interests did not pass automatically to the surface owner under the 1989 version of the Act. A surface owner claiming an interest was abandoned must follow the notice and recording procedure enacted in 2006, and that procedure applies equally to claims that the interest was abandoned before June 30, 2006.
Dormant mineral interests did not automatically pass by operation of law to the surface owner pursuant to the 1989 law. Thus, as of June 30, 2006, any surface holder seeking to claim dormant mineral rights and merge them with the surface estate is required to follow the statutory notice and recording procedures enacted in 2006 by H.B. 288. These procedures govern the manner by which mineral rights are deemed abandoned and vested in the surface holder and apply equally to claims that the mineral interests were abandoned prior to June 30, 2006.
Checked July 30, 2026. Full opinion fetched as the PDF the Supreme Court of Ohio publishes and read. Decided September 15, 2016 on two questions of Ohio law certified by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The court's own syllabus reads "2006 version of Dormant Mineral Act applies to all claims asserted after June 30, 2006". The conclusion at paragraph 40 puts the negative half plainly: "The 1989 Dormant Mineral Act was not self-executing and did not automatically transfer ownership of dormant mineral rights by operation of law; rather, the surface holder was required to bring a quiet title action seeking a decree that the mineral rights had been abandoned in order to merge those rights into the surface estate." This is the point a mineral owner told their interest lapsed decades ago most needs, because it means the lapse cannot simply be asserted. One limit on this rule, stated here rather than glossed over: the section was amended again with effect from January 30, 2014, and this record has not fetched any decision on the relationship between this holding and that later amendment.
Paying a delay rental does not preserve the interest
verifiedPayment of a delay rental during the primary term of an oil and gas lease is neither a title transaction nor a saving event under Ohio's Dormant Mineral Act, so money changing hands under a lease does not by itself stop the twenty year clock.
we conclude that the 2006 version of the Dormant Mineral Act, which is codified at R.C. 5301.56, applies to all claims asserted after June 30, 2006, and that a payment of delay rental is neither a title transaction nor a saving event.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the same fetched opinion, at paragraph 2, and carried in the court's own syllabus as "Payment of delay rental is neither a title transaction nor a saving event". This was the second of the two certified questions. It is recorded because it is the intuitive wrong answer: a holder who has been receiving payments under a lease might reasonably assume that is activity enough, and it is not. What does count is the list in division (B)(3) of the statute, and a recorded lease or other recorded title transaction is on that list even though a payment under it is not.
Oklahoma does have a marketable record title act
verifiedA person with an unbroken chain of record title to an interest in Oklahoma land for thirty years or more has marketable record title to it, and claims whose existence depends on any act, transaction, event or omission occurring before the effective date of the root of title are declared null and void.
Any person having the legal capacity to own land in this state, who has an unbroken chain of title of record to any interest in land for thirty (30) years or more, shall be deemed to have a marketable record title to such interest as defined in Section 78 of this title, subject only to the matters stated in Section 72 of this title.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the Legislature's complete-title PDF for Title 16. This rule is on the page because the answer to the dormancy question in Oklahoma is not the flat no it is in Colorado and Texas: the machinery exists here. Section 73 states that marketable record title is taken free and clear of all interests, claims or charges whose existence depends upon any act, transaction, event or omission that occurred prior to the effective date of the root of title, and that all such interests "are hereby declared to be null and void", however denominated, legal or equitable, present or future, and whether the claimant is private or governmental. Section 74 allows a claimant to preserve an interest by filing a notice of claim, and treats thirty years of continuous possession by the same record owner as equivalent to filing one. What that machinery does not reach is the subject of the next rule.
The act may not be applied to extinguish a severed mineral or royalty interest
verifiedOklahoma's marketable record title sections expressly may not be applied to bar or extinguish any mineral or royalty interest that has been severed from the fee simple title of the land, so a severed Oklahoma mineral interest does not lapse under that act however long it goes unused and unrecorded against.
Sections 71 through 80 of this title shall not be applied to bar any lessor or his successor as a reversioner of his right to possession on the expiration of any lease; or to bar or extinguish any mineral or royalty interest which has been severed from the fee simple title of the land
Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the Legislature's complete-title PDF for Title 16. This is the operative answer to the dormancy question in Oklahoma and it is a different shape from the answer in Colorado or Texas, where no such act exists to be excepted from. The exception is stated twice in the act rather than once: Section 72(e) makes marketable record title subject to "The exceptions stated in Section 76 of this title as to rights of reversioners in leases, as to severed mineral or royalty interests", and Section 76(A) then states the exception itself in the words quoted above. Section 76(D) defines the severed mineral interest broadly, and Section 76(C) separately provides that an instrument by a person who does not appear in the chain of record title cannot create a root of title, except as an owner of a severed mineral interest. The practical reading is that Oklahoma's thirty-year cure runs against most stale claims and deliberately does not run against severed minerals.
The dormant mineral act says its purpose is to increase the state's tax base
verifiedORS chapter 517 carries a heading block titled EXTINGUISHING DORMANT MINERAL INTEREST, and the first section under it is a policy section. It declares that it is in the interest of the State of Oregon to provide a mechanism for the removal of dormant encumbrances on property which prevent a landowner from using or developing that property in a manner which contributes to the economy and increases the state's tax base. That is the whole section. It was enacted by 1983 c.421 section 1, the same chapter that enacted the extinguishment procedure in the next section.
It is in the interest of the State of Oregon to provide a mechanism for the removal of dormant encumbrances on property which prevent a landowner from using or developing that property in a manner which contributes to the economy and increases the state's tax base.
Checked August 2, 2026. Read at ORS 517.170 on 2026-08-02. Dormant mineral acts are ordinarily silent about why they exist, and where they are not silent they usually say something about development or about owners nobody can find. Two other statutes on this record state their own purpose and neither says this. Pennsylvania's Dormant Oil and Gas Act gives its purpose as facilitating development by reducing the problems caused by fragmented and unknown or unlocatable ownership, and protecting the interests of unknown or unlocatable owners. Wisconsin's metalliferous minerals tax says it is to compensate the state and municipalities for the loss of valuable, irreplaceable minerals. Oregon's names the tax base, which is a statement about the fisc rather than about anybody's title, and it is worth knowing that the legislature said so when reading what the operative section does and does not protect. WHAT IS NOT READ: the 1983 legislative history, and any Oregon decision citing this section.
Thirty years, and the only two things that stop it are a recorded claim and a recent acquisition
verifiedORS s. 517.180, Procedure for extinguishing dormant mineral interest
An owner of land in which another person holds a mineral interest may extinguish the holder's interest by publishing notice and submitting an affidavit of publication for recording, unless one of two things is true: within the last thirty years the holder has submitted a statement of claim for recording, or the holder acquired the mineral interest within the previous thirty years. That is the entire list of exceptions. Producing the minerals is not on it. Granting a lease is not on it. Paying the tax on the interest is not on it. Mineral interest is defined to include any interest created by an instrument transferring, by grant, assignment, reservation or otherwise, an interest of any kind in coal, oil, gas or other minerals and geothermal resources, excluding interests vested in the United States, the State of Oregon or a political subdivision, and excluding sand and gravel; so it reaches leases and royalties as well as the fee mineral estate. Owner of land is defined as a vested fee simple owner or a contract purchaser, so a tenant cannot start it. And the section may not be waived at any time.
An owner of land in which another person holds a mineral interest, may extinguish the holder's interest by publishing notice and submitting an affidavit of publication for recording as described in subsections (4) to (9) of this section, unless: (a) Within the last 30 years, the holder of the mineral interest has submitted a statement of claim for recording in the manner set out in subsection (3) of this section; or (b) The holder of the mineral interest acquired the mineral interest within the previous 30 years.
Checked August 2, 2026. Read at ORS 517.180 on 2026-08-02, the section in full. Three things separate it from every other extinguishment statute on this record. THE PERIOD: thirty years. Every other one read here runs twenty, except Nebraska's twenty-three and Louisiana's ten-year prescription of nonuse; the thirty-year figures in Florida, Oklahoma and North Carolina's Avery County are marketable-title roots, which is a different device. THE SAVING EVENTS: two, and neither is use. Ohio, North Dakota, Washington, Michigan, Indiana and Kansas all list qualifying uses, and paying the tax counts in Kansas and Washington. On the face of this text an Oregon owner who has been producing oil for forty years, and who acquired the interest more than thirty years ago, has nothing recorded that stops the procedure. THE WAIVER BAR: subsection (10) says the provisions may not be waived AT ANY TIME. Washington's and North Dakota's non-waiver clauses both stop at the expiry of the twenty-year period; Oregon's has no expiry in it. WHAT IS NOT READ, and it matters here more than anywhere else on this page: no Oregon decision. A court asked whether forty years of production defeats a statute headed Extinguishing Dormant Mineral Interest might not reach the answer the text alone suggests, and nothing was fetched either way. Nor was anything read establishing that the section has ever been used.
Three weeks of newspaper notice, a mailing if you can be found, and sixty days to answer
verifiedORS s. 517.180, Procedure for extinguishing dormant mineral interest
To extinguish the interest and acquire ownership of it, the landowner must publish notice of the lapse at least once each week for three consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where the lands are. If the holder's address is known or can be determined by due diligence, the notice must also be mailed to the holder before the first publication. The notice must give the holder's name as shown of record, a reference to the instrument creating the original interest including where it is recorded, a description of the lands, the name and address of the person giving notice, the date of first publication, and a statement that the holder must submit a statement of claim to the county clerk within sixty days after the last publication or the interest may be extinguished. Within fifteen days after the last publication the landowner files a copy of the notice and an affidavit of publication with the county clerk. That affidavit must state either that a copy was mailed and the address it went to, or, if none was mailed, give a detailed description including dates of the efforts made to find the address with due diligence. The interest is then extinguished and becomes the property of the landowner unless the holder submits a statement of claim within the sixty days.
If the owner of the land affected by the mineral interest gives notice as required in subsection (4) of this section and submits a copy of the notice and the affidavit of publication for recording as required by subsection (6) of this section, the mineral interest of the holder shall be extinguished and become the property of the owner of the lands, unless the holder of the mineral interest submits a statement of claim to the county clerk within 60 days after the date of the last publication of the notice.
Checked August 2, 2026. Read at ORS 517.180(3) to (9) on 2026-08-02. North Dakota is the pair for this, not the contrast: a North Dakota surface owner also publishes once a week for three weeks in the official county newspaper and also mails a copy where the address is of record or can be determined on reasonable inquiry. The probe that put Oregon on this record said North Dakota used publication as a fallback, which the North Dakota page here already contradicted; the fallback state is Washington, where service leads and publication is available only where the owner is unknown to the county treasurer and cannot be found after due diligence. What Oregon adds is the ORDER of the mailing. It goes out BEFORE the first publication, where North Dakota's goes within ten days AFTER the last one, which means an Oregon owner who is findable hears about it at the start of the three weeks rather than at the end. The statement of claim itself, under subsection (3), is short: it must give the holder's name and address as shown in the instrument that created the original interest, and the name and address of the current holder. WHAT IS NOT READ: what due diligence means here, and whether any Oregon court has measured it.
Miss your share of the assessment work on a mine and the county clerk deeds your interest away
verifiedORS s. 517.300, Effect of certificate
This is separate from the dormant mineral act and it reaches a narrower thing: quartz or placer mines owned by more than one person, which is the mining claim world rather than severed oil and gas. Any person owning a legal or equitable interest may perform the annual assessment work. If a co-owner fails to contribute their proportion, the performing co-owner may give notice at the end of the assessment year stating the work done, the dates, and the amount due, requiring payment within ninety days. Notice is served personally by the sheriff, or, if the delinquent co-owner cannot be found within the state, by publication once a week for ninety days in the weekly newspaper published nearest the mine. If the ninety days pass unpaid, title to the delinquent co-owner's interest is immediately vested in the co-owners who did the work. They file affidavits of nonpayment and the county clerk issues a certificate which is equivalent to a deed from the delinquent co-owner, recorded and indexed in the Mineral and Mining Record with the same force and effect as a deed and giving like constructive notice. No court is involved at any point. The delinquent owner's one defence is to file an affidavit of payment with the clerk before the certificate issues, which stops the clerk and leaves the parties to a suit to quiet title.
A certificate issued as provided in ORS 517.280 shall be equivalent to a deed from a delinquent co-owner of all the interest of the delinquent co-owner in and to all mines described in the notice, and shall convey the interest of the delinquent co-owner in the premises to the co-owner or co-owners who performed or caused to be performed the assessment work.
Checked August 2, 2026. Read at ORS 517.230 to 517.330 on 2026-08-02, the whole run. A county clerk issuing an instrument that operates as a deed, on one party's affidavit and with no judicial step, is not on this record anywhere else. Read it beside the dormant mineral act on the same page and Oregon carries two statutory routes by which a mineral interest moves without its owner agreeing, in two separate acts a century apart. Illinois is the other state here with two, and both of Illinois's sit inside one statute, the Severed Mineral Interest Act, which supplies a court trust that conveys to the surface owner after seven years and a statutory adverse possession proceeding at section 11. The distinction between two mechanisms in one act and two acts is not worth ranking, and no ranking is made here. SCOPE, and it is the thing to be careful about: assessment work is a mining claim concept and ORS 517.230 frames the sections as applying whenever quartz or placer mines are owned by one or more persons or owned in common. Nothing was read extending this to a severed oil and gas interest and this page does not extend it. The ninety-day publication is worth noticing on its own terms. Every other publication requirement read for this record runs three weeks: Oregon's own dormant mineral act, North Dakota's, Washington's fallback, Illinois's, Hawaii's mining lease notice. This one runs once a week for ninety days after the first publication, and the ninety-day payment window runs from the last of them. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether these sections are used, and what a modern Oregon court would do with a certificate issued under them.
The Dormant Oil and Gas Act says in terms that it does not give the minerals to the surface owner
verifiedDormant Oil and Gas Act, Act of Jul. 11, 2006, P.L. 1134, No. 115, § 2
Pennsylvania's Dormant Oil and Gas Act states its own purpose as facilitating development by reducing the problems caused by fragmented and unknown or unlocatable ownership, and protecting the interests of unknown or unlocatable owners. It then says expressly that it is not the purpose of the act to vest the surface owner with title to oil and gas interests severed from the surface estate. No period of non use lapses a severed Pennsylvania oil or gas interest under this act.
It is not the purpose of this act to vest the surface owner with title to oil and gas interests that have been severed from the surface estate.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the act's own text, fetched as the PDF the General Assembly publishes for 2006 Act 115 and extracted with pdftotext. This is the single most useful thing on this record for the question the dormancy page exists to answer, because it is a statute whose name promises the opposite of what it does. A reader who searched for whether Pennsylvania has a dormant mineral act, found that it does, and stopped there would conclude their interest can be taken. The act's stated purpose section says otherwise in one sentence. Note the scope precisely: this act concerns oil and gas, and its own definition of gas excludes coalbed methane, so it does not speak to minerals generally. What has NOT been read is whether any other Pennsylvania statute lapses a severed mineral interest, and the Pennsylvania unconsolidated statutes were not enumerated the way Montana's code was, so this rule establishes what this act does rather than a whole-of-code negative.
A forty year marketable record title act with no mineral exception, and it is Connecticut's act adopted twenty-eight years later
verifiedR.I. Gen. Laws § 34-13.1-4, Prior interest void
Any person having legal capacity to own land in the state who has an unbroken chain of title to any interest in land for forty years or more is deemed to have a marketable record title to that interest. The chain is unbroken where the land records of the town in which the land is located disclose a conveyance or other title transaction of record for not less than forty years which purports to create the interest, or contains language sufficient to transfer it, either in the person claiming it or in somebody from whom it has become vested in them, with nothing appearing of record purporting to divest the claimant. Such a title is held by its owner and taken by any person dealing with the land free and clear of all interests, claims or charges whatsoever whose existence depends on any act, transaction, event or omission occurring before the effective date of the root title, and all of them, however denominated, whether legal or equitable, present or future, whether asserted by a person sui juris or under a disability, whether within or without the state, whether natural or corporate, private or governmental, are declared null and void. The escape is a notice of claim recorded within the forty year period, whose contents, recording and indexing are prescribed. The excepted interests are a lessor's reversion; any easement or interest in the nature of an easement, and rights granted, excepted or reserved by the instrument creating it including any right for future use, where its existence is evidenced by the location beneath, upon or above the land of a pipe, valve, road, wire, cable, conduit, duct, sewer, track, hole, tower or other physical facility, whether or not observable; and any interest of the United States, the state or a political subdivision, or of a public utility company. There is no mineral exception. And no person may use the privilege of recording notices to slander title: a court finding a claim recorded for that purpose alone awards the plaintiff all costs, attorney's fees and all damages sustained.
All such interests, claims or charges, however, denominated, whether legal or equitable, present or future, whether those interests, claims or charges are asserted by a person sui juris or under a disability, whether that a person is within or without the state, whether that person is natural or corporate is private or governmental, are hereby declared to be null and void.
Checked August 3, 2026. All eleven sections of R.I. Gen. Laws ch. 34-13.1 were fetched and READ IN FULL on 2026-08-03, 12,650 characters, enacted by P.L. 1995 ch. 241 and ch. 299. Across all eleven, MINERAL returns 0, QUARRY 0, SEVER 0 and COAL 0. THE FINDING IS THAT THIS IS CONNECTICUT'S STATUTE. Read the two side by side and they are not merely similar in policy: the section headings run in the same order and say the same things, the forty year chain sentence is the same sentence, the voiding sentence carries the same unusual sui juris construction, the excepted interests list runs through the same eleven physical facilities in the same order ending in or other physical facility and whether or not the existence of such facility is observable, and both carry a section headed Notice not to be recorded to slander title. Connecticut enacted its version in 1967 and shortened the root from sixty years to forty in 1969; Rhode Island enacted the forty year version outright in 1995. TWO SMALL DIFFERENCES WERE FOUND AND BOTH ARE IN THE EXCEPTIONS. Connecticut's § 47-33h saves the interest of a public service company AND of any natural gas company, and it saves a conservation restriction held by a land trust or nonprofit organisation, which was added in 2001. Rhode Island's § 34-13.1-7 saves a public utility company as defined in § 39-1-2 and stops there. Neither excepts minerals, so Rhode Island joins Connecticut, Florida and Vermont rather than Oklahoma, Utah and North Carolina. ONE OBSERVATION ABOUT THE COPY READ, recorded because it is what the official text says: § 34-13.1-7 begins any lessor or is or her successor, and § 34-13.1-4 reads whether that a person is within or without the state. Both appear to be transcription errors in the enacted text as published, and the quote above reproduces the second of them verbatim rather than tidying it. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Rhode Island decision on this chapter, and § 34-13.1-3, the list of matters a marketable record title remains subject to, was read but is summarised rather than set out here.
No dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, on the title names and on both titles that would hold one
verifiedS.C. Code of Laws, table of contents
Nothing read for this record ends a South Carolina mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, so there is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anybody to serve. There is also no title in the code named for minerals or mining at all: the subject lives inside title 48, Environmental Protection and Conservation, as the South Carolina Mining Act at chapter 20 and the oil and gas chapter at 43, which is a structural choice worth knowing before searching. What can still move a South Carolina mineral interest is what can move one anywhere, a conveyance or a tax sale, together with adverse possession on the ten year rule dealt with separately on this page.
Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and not by any search. Three layers. FIRST, the whole code at title level: the Code of Laws table of contents was fetched and parsed into 63 title numbers and names, and MINERAL, MINING, OIL, GAS, DORMANT, SEVER and MARKETABLE appear in none of them, against controls of PROPERT 2, being title 10 Public Buildings and Property and title 27 Property and Conveyances, CONVEYANCE 1 and ENVIRONMENT 1. SECOND, the two titles where such an act would be codified, enumerated to chapter level: title 27, Property and Conveyances, 32 chapters, and title 48, Environmental Protection and Conservation, 45 chapters, 77 in total. DORMANT, SEVER and MARKETABLE return zero across both. The controls are what make those zeros mean something: in title 27, UNCLAIMED returns 1 at chapter 18 Uniform Unclaimed Property Act, CONVEYANCE 2, ESTATE 3, TITLE 1 at chapter 11 Confirmation of Titles and ESCHEAT 1; and in title 48, MINING returns 2 at chapter 20 the South Carolina Mining Act and chapter 21 the Interstate Mining Compact, OIL 4 and GAS 2 at chapters 41 and 43. THIRD, chapter 27-11 is named Confirmation of Titles and was fetched, because a chapter with that name is where a marketable title act would hide; it is not one. THE LIMIT: this is a name-level count over the code plus a chapter-level count over the two titles that would hold such an act, so it cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose title does not disclose it, and no South Carolina decision was read.
Twenty-three years unused and title vests in the surface owner on the date of abandonment, with no court involved
verifiedSDCL 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.
A mineral interest is abandoned if it has not been used for a period of twenty-three years or more. Title to an abandoned mineral interest vests in the owner of the surface estate in the land in, or under, which the mineral interest is located on the date of abandonment.
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.
Keeping an address on file is the mineral owner's job, and not keeping one waives the right to be told the interest is lapsing
verifiedSDCL 43-30A-6, Notice by surface owner--Contents--Proof of publication and mailing
To succeed to an abandoned interest the surface owner must publish notice of the lapse once each week for three weeks in the official newspaper of the county, and must also mail a copy by registered or certified mail to the record owner at the record owner's address of record no later than ten days after the last publication. The surface owner may rely on the last address of record at the county register of deeds. Then the section allocates the burden, and it does so against the mineral owner in terms: it is the record mineral owner's obligation to maintain an address of record in that office, and failure to maintain one is a waiver by the record mineral owner of the requirement to mail the notice at all. Recording a copy of the notice with an affidavit of publication and of any mailing is prima facie evidence that notice was properly given. There is no duty of search or inquiry on the surface owner anywhere in the chapter.
It is the record mineral owner's obligation to maintain an address of record in the office of the register of deeds in the county in which their mineral interest is located. Failure to maintain an address of record is a waiver by the record mineral owner of the requirement to mail a copy of the notice of lapse to the record mineral owner.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read in full at SDCL 43-30A-6 on 2026-08-04. The waiver sentence was added by SL 2016, ch 215, § 5, the same session law that lengthened the period to twenty-three years. Neighbouring North Dakota arranges this the other way: its act defines a reasonable inquiry and lists four searches the surface owner must make. No comparable duty appears anywhere in chapter 43-30A, which was read end to end.
A statement of claim filed within sixty days of the end of publication still saves the interest
verifiedSDCL 43-30A-5, Circumstances in which failure to record statement does not cause abandonment
The statement of claim is normally due before the twenty-three years expire. It must be recorded for the record owner of the mineral interest, contain the owner's name and mailing address and a legal description of the land, and be recorded with the register of deeds in the county where the interest is located; a joint tenant may record for the other joint tenants, but a tenant in common may not. Missing that deadline is not fatal. Failure to record in time does not cause abandonment if the record owner records a statement of claim within sixty days after completion of the publication of the notice of lapse. The interest is treated as in use on the date of recording.
Failure to record the statement of claim within the time period provided in § 43-30A-4 does not cause a mineral interest to be abandoned if the record owner of the mineral interest records a statement of claim pursuant to § 43-30A-4 within sixty days after completion of the publication of the notice of lapse pursuant to § 43-30A-6.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read at SDCL 43-30A-5 and 43-30A-4 on 2026-08-04. Note the trigger differs from North Dakota's sixty days, which runs from the FIRST publication; South Dakota's runs from the completion of publication, which is three weeks later.
A court can put an unlocatable owner's minerals in trust with the county treasurer and lease them out, and the statute says that is not use
verifiedSDCL 43-30B-6, Actions not use of mineral interest under chapter 43-30A
Any person or entity holding an interest in a tract may petition the circuit court in that county to declare a trust in favour of the owner of a mineral interest in it whose location or identity cannot be determined. On a showing that the trust is in the owner's best interest and that the petitioner cannot locate or identify them after due diligence, the court declares the trust, appoints the county treasurer or another person as trustee, and authorises the trustee to execute a mineral lease, a ratification, a division order or any other related instrument on terms the court approves. The county treasurer may decline, in which case the court appoints an alternate. All bonuses, rentals, royalties and other income are paid to the trustee, who administers the trust under title 55; if the income does not cover the fees and costs, the petitioner indemnifies the fund. The trust runs until the court finds that an owner has appeared and been identified, with no outside time limit. And then the chapter closes the door it might have opened: no act taken by or on the permission of a trustee, petitioner or court under it counts as use of the mineral interest under the abandonment chapter. So a missing owner's minerals can be leased and can be producing, with the money accruing to them in a county-held trust, while the twenty-three years keep running against the interest itself.
No act taken by or upon the permission of a trustee, petitioner, or court under this chapter shall be considered use of a mineral interest under chapter 43-30A.
Checked August 4, 2026. Chapter 43-30B read end to end on 2026-08-04, all seven sections. The chapter is recent: SL 2013, ch 223, substantially rewritten by SL 2017, ch 189. Illinois has the other court-declared trust on this record and it works the opposite way round, ending in the court conveying the interest to the surface owner seven years on; South Dakota's trust never ends of itself and the divesting is done by the separate abandonment chapter instead.
A second and older clock, a 1947 marketable title act that never says the word mineral and turns on possession
verifiedSeparately from the abandonment chapter, South Dakota has had a marketable record title act since 1947. A person with an unbroken chain of title to any interest in land for twenty-two years or longer, who is in possession of the land, has marketable record title to that interest. That title is held free and clear of all interests, claims and charges whatever which depend on any act, transaction, event or omission twenty-two years or more earlier, whether or not evidenced by a recorded instrument, unless the claimant files a verified notice of claim within twenty-three years of the recording of the deed under which title is claimed. No disability and no lack of knowledge of any kind on anyone's part extends that time. The claims barred are defined as any and all interests of any nature whatever, however denominated. Possession may be shown of record by an affidavit of possession, which cannot be filed until twenty-three years after the conveyance it rests on. The chapter's exceptions cover lessors and reversioners, remaindermen, the state and the United States, and railroad and public utility land. None of them mentions minerals, and the words mineral, oil, gas and coal do not occur anywhere in the chapter. WHAT THAT ADDS UP TO FOR A SEVERED MINERAL INTEREST IS NOT SETTLED HERE, and the page does not pretend otherwise. The act reaches every interest it does not except, which is the shape that makes Florida's act reach minerals by saying nothing about them. But it operates in favour of a person in possession, and a severed mineral owner is not in possession; and the Legislature enacted a dedicated abandonment chapter thirty-eight years later, which is not what a legislature does if the older act already did the work. Pointing the other way, the abandonment chapter treats a mineral owner as having needed to guard against an affidavit of possession recorded under this chapter's section 43-30-7 under prior law. This record reports both readings and resolves neither.
Such marketable title shall be held by such person and shall be taken by his successors in interest free and clear of all interest, claims, and charges whatever, the existence of which depends in whole or in part upon any act, transaction, event, or omission that occurred twenty-two years or more prior thereto, whether such claim or charge be evidenced by a recorded instrument or otherwise
Checked August 4, 2026. Chapter 43-30 read end to end on 2026-08-04, 16,594 characters, and every sentence stated above was read in the chapter itself. The controls: the words mineral, oil, gas and coal each return zero occurrences, against possession at eleven. What is verified here is what the act SAYS and does not say. What is deliberately left open is what it does to a severed mineral estate, because no section read answers that and the two pointers in the text run against each other: the bar reaches any and all interests of any nature whatever, while the operative section requires possession. Nobody should read this rule as establishing that a South Dakota mineral interest does, or does not, survive chapter 43-30 on its own. That question is listed in what this page does not answer yet.
Twenty years unused and the interest is extinguished, unless a statement of claim was filed first
verifiedT.C.A. § 66-5-108(c) and (b)(3)
Tennessee has a dormant mineral interests act and it is the plainest one on this record. T.C.A. 66-5-108(c) provides that any interest in coal, oil and gas, and other minerals, if unused for twenty years, is extinguished and the ownership reverts to the owner of the surface, unless a statement of claim has been filed. USE is defined in subsection (b)(3) and is deliberately wide: minerals being produced under the interest, operations for injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal of water, gas or other fluid substances, rentals or royalties being paid to the owner for delaying or enjoying the rights, any of those uses being carried out on any tract the interest is unitized or pooled with, or taxes being paid on the interest. Any one of them resets the clock, and the last of them carries a condition that is not in this section at all and is set out separately on this page. The statement of claim is the defence, it is cheap, and it does not expire on a schedule of its own: it must be filed before the end of the twenty year period, it goes to the register of deeds in the county where the land lies, and it has to give the name and address of the owner, cite the tax maps and parcel numbers for the surface owners above the mineral estate, and reference the instrument the interest is claimed under. Once filed it is prima facie evidence in any legal proceeding that the interest was in use on the day it was filed. The act cannot be waived at any time before the twenty years expire, subsection (i) and subsection (g) say so twice over, and it applies in all ways to property owned by the state.
Any interest in coal, oil and gas, and other minerals shall, if unused for a period of twenty (20) years, be extinguished, unless a statement of claim is filed in accordance with subsection (d), and the ownership of the mineral interest shall revert to the owner of the surface.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from T.C.A. 66-5-108 on the verbatim mirror, 12,975 characters, the whole section read end to end including the legislative findings in subsection (a) and the two printed court forms. The currency control was run separately against Tennessee's own bill record on capitol.tn.gov and is described in the caveats and gaps on this page.
Nothing lapses on its own: it takes a chancery complaint, three weeks of published notice and a chancellor's signature
verifiedReading subsection (c) alone would suggest a Tennessee mineral interest evaporates on the twentieth anniversary. It does not. Subsection (e) is the machinery, and it puts the whole burden on the person who wants the minerals. Only somebody who would succeed to the interest on its lapse, in practice the surface owner, can start it, and they start it by filing a complaint for claim of abandoned mineral interest with the clerk and master of the county where the interest is. The complaint is sworn, and the statute prints it out in full with the blanks in place, down to the notary block. It requires the plaintiff to state that after inquiring with the county property assessor they are aware of no tax being paid on the mineral estate, and that on reasonable inquiry they are aware of no use being made of it. The clerk and master then publishes notice once a week for three consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county, and sends a copy by certified mail within ten days after that publication to the mineral owner named in the complaint. The mineral owner has sixty days to file an answer alleging a claim. If an answer is filed the matter is contested and nothing lapses. If none is filed the clerk and master certifies that fact to the chancellor, who signs the order, and the statute prints that order out too. The filing fee is thirty dollars plus the cost of publication. For the lapse to bind subsequent interest holders a certified copy of the final order must be recorded with the register of deeds. No action to contest a lapse may be brought more than three years after the interest lapsed, and a court may award fees against a claim or complaint filed without reasonable inquiry, with no factual basis and to harass.
Upon the filing of a complaint of claim of abandoned mineral interest the clerk and master shall give notice that the mineral interest identified in the complaint shall lapse in sixty (60) days by publishing the same once a week for three (3) consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which such mineral interest is located, and shall send by certified mail within ten (10) days after such publication a copy of such notice to the owner of such mineral interest identified by the plaintiff in the complaint of claim of abandoned mineral interest.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from T.C.A. 66-5-108(e), on the verbatim mirror. Subsection (k)(2) is worth knowing from the other side: if the court finds no record of taxes paid and no statement of claim referencing the mineral estate by tax map and parcel number, the complaint is DEEMED to have been filed in good faith, so the fee shifting protection is narrow.
Paying the taxes stops the clock only if you registered the interest with the county assessor first
verifiedT.C.A. § 67-5-809(d), with § 67-5-804(b)
This is the rule most likely to cost a Tennessee mineral owner the interest, and it is not in the dormancy statute. T.C.A. 66-5-108(b)(3) lists payment of taxes as a use that keeps the twenty year clock at zero. T.C.A. 67-5-804(b), in the property tax title, separately requires ALL mineral owners to identify their mineral interests with the property assessor in the county where the interest lies, giving a deed reference number and specifying where the mineral estate lies by citing the tax maps and parcel numbers of the surface owners above it. Three ways of identifying it are accepted: by map and parcel number of the surface owners, by supplying reliable and accurate maps that the assessor keeps on file, or by giving the surface owners' names and enough further information for the assessor to locate the interest on the assessor's own maps. Then T.C.A. 67-5-809(d) closes the circuit. A mineral interest owner who has failed to identify the location of the interest as 67-5-804 requires may not claim payment of taxes as a use of the mineral interest under title 66 chapter 5. The consequence is that an owner who has faithfully paid Tennessee property tax on a mineral interest for twenty years, but never registered where it is, has not stopped the clock at all. There are money penalties in the same section as well: twenty five percent for failing to register within three years of 1 July 1987, and ten percent of the current assessment for an owner who is paying tax but has still not identified the location. Interests that had been registered and taxed through the current tax year on 1 July 1987 did not have to register again.
Further, any mineral interest owner failing to identify the location of the mineral interest according to § 67-5-804 shall not claim payment of taxes as a use of mineral interest as provided in title 66, chapter 5.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from T.C.A. 67-5-809(d) and 67-5-804(b) on the verbatim mirror. These two sections were not found by searching the property title: T.C.A. 66-5-108(b) names 67-5-804(b), 67-5-809 and 67-5-2502(e) by number in its own opening words, which is what sent this record to them. The dormancy statute's own legislative findings in subsection (a)(2) explain why the link exists: the general assembly found that separated mineral estates were not properly registered and so were off the tax rolls.
Texas has no dormant mineral statute
verifiedTexas Constitution and Statutes, search of all codes for the word dormant
Texas has no dormant mineral interest act. No period of non use lapses a severed Texas mineral interest, there is no notice of intent to preserve to file, and there is no notice of lapse to record. An interest severed a century ago is still owned by somebody today.
Checked July 30, 2026. Established by reading the code rather than from recollection, the way Colorado's negative was. The official Texas statutes site, whose own currency statement is that the statutes are current through the 89th 2nd Called Legislative Session, 2025, was searched across all codes for the word "dormant". It returns eleven chapters in the whole of the Texas statutes and the Texas Constitution, and every one is enumerable and unrelated to mineral interests: Texas Constitution Article 5, Judicial Department; Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 31, Judgments, and Chapter 34, Execution on Judgments, both of which concern dormant judgments; Education Code Chapter 13; Government Code Chapter 403, Comptroller of Public Accounts; Local Government Code Chapter 245, Issuance of Local Permits; Property Code Chapter 52, Judgment Lien; Property Code Chapter 76, Report, Delivery, and Claims Process for Certain Property; and Water Code Chapters 36, 49 and 57, all three of which are water district chapters. Property Code Chapter 76 was then opened and read, and its only use of the word is a service charge against "a dormant account or dormant deposit of fund", which is about money somebody else is holding and not about a mineral interest. One point about the instrument matters and is recorded here so the test can be judged: this search is an AND of the terms at chapter level rather than a phrase match, which was confirmed by comparing "dormant" at eleven chapters against "notice of intent to preserve" at 332. That makes the eleven chapter result the stronger test rather than a weaker one, because any chapter creating a dormant mineral act would have to contain the word somewhere in it. Searches aimed at a lapse provision carrying some other name were also run across all codes and returned only chapters whose subject matter is unrelated. Whether a severed Texas interest can be lost by adverse possession is a separate question and is not answered by this rule.
Utah has a marketable title act that wipes out old interests after forty years, and it expressly cannot touch minerals
verifiedA person with an unbroken chain of record title to any interest in land for forty years or more has a marketable record title to that interest. The holder of that title takes free and clear of all interests, claims or charges whatever, the existence of which depends on any act, transaction, event or omission occurring before the effective date of the root of title, and all such interests, however denominated, whether legal or equitable, present or future, asserted by a person under a disability or not, within or without the state, natural or corporate, private or governmental, are declared void. An interest can be preserved by recording a verified notice of claim during the forty years, and no disability or lack of knowledge suspends the running of that period. But the chapter carries a list of things it may not be applied to, and one of them is minerals: it may not be applied to extinguish any right, title, estate or interest in and to minerals, or any development, mining, production or other rights or easements related to the minerals or exercisable in connection with them. The same list also protects water rights, observable easements, pipeline, highway, railroad and public utility interests, a lessor's reversion, and the interests of the state and of the United States.
This chapter may not be applied to: ... (5) extinguish any right, title, estate, or interest in and to minerals, and any development, mining, production or other rights or easements related to the minerals or exercisable in connection with the minerals;
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 57-9-1, 57-9-3, 57-9-4 and 57-9-6 of the Utah Code. This is the second state on this record whose marketable record title act expressly refuses to reach severed minerals, and the comparison with the first is the point. Oklahoma's act says it may not be applied to extinguish a severed mineral or royalty interest. Utah's exception is wider on its face: it covers the interest in the minerals AND the development, mining, production and other rights or easements related to them or exercisable in connection with them, so the access rights that make a mineral interest worth anything are protected alongside the interest itself. Read the two together and the shape of the danger becomes clear, because a marketable title act is the quiet way a mineral interest dies in states that do not except it: no notice, no proceeding, no surface owner having to do anything, just a root of title forty years back and everything older declared void. Utah's subsection (5) was amended into its current form in 2011. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any Utah decision has construed the mineral exception, and section 57-9-10, which was seen in the chapter and not read.
Beyond that exception, nothing read in the mining title or the property title ends an interest for non use
verifiedNothing else read for this record lapses, extinguishes or reverts a severed Utah mineral interest for non use. There is no dormant mineral act in the title governing mines and mining or in the title governing recording of documents. There is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim or notice of intent to preserve that a mineral owner must file to stay alive, and no notice of lapse for a surface owner to record. The one statute that could have ended an old mineral interest, the marketable record title act, expressly excepts minerals from its reach.
Any person having the legal capacity to own land in this state, who has an unbroken chain of title of record to any interest in land for 40 years or more, shall be deemed to have a marketable record title to such interest
Checked July 31, 2026. THE INSTRUMENT BEHIND THIS NEGATIVE, so a reader can repeat it. The Utah Legislature publishes every title and chapter as a single PDF at a fixed URL, and the whole of the mines and mining title, the whole of the recording title and the severance tax chapter were fetched that way and extracted with pdftotext -layout. Every section heading in all three was enumerated: 161, 482 and 32, making 675 headings. The word "dormant" appears in NONE of those headings and in none of the three full texts, not once. "Lapse" appears in no heading. Every heading containing "abandon", "forfeit" or "marketable" was then read to see what it was about: the abandonment headings are abandoned mine reclamation and condominium and timeshare provisions, the forfeiture headings are a surety bond fund and a mined land provision, and the three marketable headings are the act described in the rule above. A NOTE ON THE METHOD, because it nearly went wrong here. The first enumeration of these files returned six headings for a 532,000 character title, because the pattern assumed a full stop after the section number and Utah prints "40-6-2 Definitions." with none. A silent near-zero result is what a broken enumeration looks like, and the fix was to look at the actual text rather than trust the count. WHAT THIS CANNOT EXCLUDE: a provision in a title that was not read, and any judge-made doctrine, since nothing was fetched from a Utah court.
A dormant oil and gas act enacted in 2024, ten years of non use plus a statement of interest that has to be refiled every five
verified29 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.
(a) An abandoned interest in oil and gas shall revert to and merge with the surface estate from which it was severed. (b) An interest in oil and gas is deemed abandoned at any time that: (1) it has been unused for a continuous period of 10 years after July 1, 1973; and (2) no statement of interest under subsection (e) of this section has been filed at any time within the preceding five years.
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.
A forty year marketable record title act whose eight exceptions were read one by one, and none of them is minerals
verified27 V.S.A. § 601, Marketable record title: requirements
Any person holding an unbroken chain of title of record to any interest in real estate for forty years is deemed at the end of that period to have a marketable record title to the interest. That title is held, and taken by successors, free and clear of any and all interests, liens, claims and charges whose existence depends in whole or in part on any act, transaction, event or omission occurring before the forty year period, whether or not the instrument purporting to create the interest was properly executed, and all such interests are declared void and of no effect at law or in equity. The escape is a notice in writing, verified by oath, filed for record within the forty year period, containing a full and accurate description of the land in particular terms, recorded at length where a deed of the land is recorded, and indexed under the claimant's name as grantee and the current record owner's name as grantor. A notice so filed stays effective for forty years from the date of filing. No absence, incapacity, disability or lack of knowledge of any kind suspends the running of the period. Eight kinds of interest survive without any notice: a lessor's reversion and a lessee's rights; a mortgagee's interest until the secured obligation falls due; a mortgagee's interest where the instrument states no due date; an interest held by adverse possession not evidenced by a recorded instrument; a remainder, reverter, reversionary interest or interest arising on a condition, except one about the distance between a structure and a highway or municipal property; an easement whose existence is clearly observable by physical evidence of its use; an easement granted, excepted or reserved by a recorded instrument; and conservation or preservation rights created under the two conservation chapters of Title 10. There is no mineral exception. Separately, the act does not affect real estate owned or held by the United States, the State of Vermont or any political subdivision, and those three are excluded from the definition of person.
Any person who holds an unbroken chain of title of record to any interest in real estate for 40 years shall at the end of that period be deemed to have a marketable record title to the interest, subject only to such claims to the interest and such defects of title as are not extinguished or barred under this chapter.
Checked August 3, 2026. All six sections of the subchapter, 27 V.S.A. §§ 601 to 606, were fetched and READ IN FULL on 2026-08-03, not enumerated and not searched. That matters, because this is a negative about what a statute does not say, and the whole subchapter is short enough to read end to end. Across all six sections the words mineral, minerals, oil, gas, petroleum, mine, mining and quarry appear NOT ONCE. The eight exceptions in § 604(a) were then read one at a time and set against a severed mineral interest, because the fifth of them is the one that could be mistaken for a rescue: it saves a remainder, a reverter, a reversionary interest or an interest arising upon a condition, and a severed mineral fee is none of those. It is a present interest in real estate, which is the thing the act is aimed at. VERMONT IS THEREFORE THE SECOND STATE ON THIS RECORD WHOSE MARKETABLE RECORD TITLE ACT REACHES SEVERED MINERALS BY SAYING NOTHING ABOUT THEM. Florida was the first found and its chapter 712 likewise contains zero occurrences of mineral. Read all four together and the instrument turns out to be the same and the results are four different: Oklahoma and Utah except severed minerals in terms, North Carolina's chapter 47B uses the word mineral exactly once and it is in an exception, and Florida and Vermont never use it at all. One line of text is the whole difference. Two Vermont-specific points a Florida reader should not carry across. The period is FORTY years rather than thirty, and a notice of claim lasts forty years from filing rather than needing to be refiled every thirty. And § 602(b) is almost word for word Florida's s. 712.05 on knowledge: no absence, incapacity, disability or lack of knowledge OF ANY KIND suspends the clock, so an heir who never knew the interest existed is in exactly the same position as one who did. WHAT IS NOT READ AND IT IS THE MAIN LIMIT: no Vermont decision on this subchapter was fetched, so whether a Vermont court has ever applied the act to a severed mineral interest is unknown here. Nothing was read on how the act interacts with 29 V.S.A. § 563, which is a second and much newer route to the same destination with a different clock, a different filing and a different scope, and the two statutes do not mention each other.
After 35 years the law presumes the minerals were never there, except in the coalfields
verifiedWhere a claim to coal, minerals, ore, oil or subsurface substances under Virginia land, or the right to enter to explore for them, derives from a writing made 35 years or more before the action is brought, it is prima facie presumed that no such substances exist under the land. The presumption applies only where for 35 years or more the right has not been exercised, the claimant has never been charged taxes on it, all the taxes on the land have been charged to and paid by the landowner, and no deed of the claim has been recorded; or where the right was exercised, the minerals are exhausted and mining has been abandoned for 35 years or more. It does not apply to lands lying west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
it shall be prima facie presumed that no coal, minerals, ore, oil, or subsurface substances exist in, on, or under such lands, except lands lying west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-400 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. Two things here have no counterpart on this record. The first is the mechanism. Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan and Indiana all end an interest by deeming it abandoned after a period of non use, and Kentucky ends one by conveying it away after seven years of production with the owner still missing. All five are statements about the owner. Virginia instead presumes, as a matter of evidence, that the minerals were never there, which is a statement about geology. The second is the exception, and it is the reason to read the section rather than a summary of it: the presumption does not reach lands west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On any ordinary understanding of Virginia geography that is where the coalfields are, so the provision withholds itself from the part of the state where severed mineral claims are most common. This record has NOT read anything explaining why, and does not speculate. Note also the tax element, which does real work: the presumption is available only if the claimant was never charged taxes on the claim and the landowner paid all the taxes on the land. The section's history runs from 1924 through the 2021 special session recodification.
The landowner sues, the claimant gets six months to find something, and then the claim goes
verifiedThe owner of land subject to such a claim may bring an action to extinguish it, naming the person from whom the claim derives, or that person's successors as unknown defendants. The court must allow at least six months from the docketing of the case, during which the defendant may explore for and discover commercial minerals. Absent satisfactory evidence to the contrary the court presumes none exist, declares the claim a cloud on the title, releases the land from it and extinguishes it. If the defendant does prove commercial minerals exist, the court instead orders them charged with taxes according to law.
In the absence of satisfactory evidence to the contrary, it shall be presumed that no commercial coal, mineral, ore, oil, or subsurface substance exists in or on the land, and the court shall enter an order declaring the claim or right to be a cloud on the title and releasing the land therefrom and extinguishing such claim or right.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-401. This is the operative half of the presumption in section 45.2-400 and it is adversarial from beginning to end, which distinguishes it sharply from every other extinguishing mechanism on this record. Ohio, North Dakota and Michigan put the burden on the mineral owner to have done something in the last twenty years, and Indiana attaches the consequence to the passage of time alone. Virginia requires the landowner to sue, to name the claimant or their unknown successors as defendants, and then hands the defendant a statutory opportunity to defeat the case by going out and finding minerals: the court must allow not less than six months during which the defendant may explore and discover. The consequence of winning that fight is also unusual and worth noting: the defendant who proves commercial minerals exist does not simply keep the claim, the court orders the minerals charged with taxes according to law, which is the same tax element that made the presumption available in the first place. WHAT IS NOT READ: the venue provision it cross-refers to, and any Virginia decision applying either section.
Two thirds of the coal can have a court lease a known minority owner's share, with the money escrowed
verifiedA coal owner or lessee with at least a two-thirds interest in the coal on a tract who seeks to extract it may petition the circuit court to establish a trust for the KNOWN coal owners. The petition must describe the tract, list all known owners, and propose lease terms typical of arm's length leases in the area. The petitioner must satisfy the court that a diligent effort was made to obtain each minority owner's consent, and must demonstrate that production by the petitioner's lessee is of economic benefit to all parties, that the economic value of the coal is lost and the benefit of owning it decreased if it is not produced, and that there is no practical way to divide the coal among the owners without extracting it. Notice of the petition goes to the party subject to it by registered or certified mail with return receipt. The court may appoint a trustee and authorise a lease, and must escrow, or direct the trustee to escrow, the proceeds attributable to each minority interest until that owner's claim is established to the court's satisfaction.
The petitioner shall demonstrate to the court that (i) the production of the coal by the petitioner's lessee is of economic benefit to all parties; (ii) if the coal is not produced, the economic value of the coal is lost and the economic benefit of owning the coal is decreased; and (iii) there is no practical method for dividing such coal among the owners without extracting the coal.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-607. This is the provision that puts Virginia in a category of its own on this record, because it reaches an owner who is not missing at all. Every other majority or substitute mechanism here is aimed at somebody who cannot be found: Montana's, Pennsylvania's, Kentucky's and Virginia's own trust for missing coal owners all require a diligent search first. West Virginia's three-quarters cotenancy rule does bind a known holdout, and pays them the best royalty in the tract by statute. Virginia's section 45.2-607 binds a known, identified minority coal owner who has simply refused, through a court-appointed trustee leasing on their behalf, with the proceeds escrowed rather than fixed by a statutory formula. The threshold is two thirds and it is measured on the coal interest. Note what the petitioner has to prove: not just that a lease is fair, but that the coal is a wasting asset and that it cannot be physically divided. WHAT IS NOT READ: what happens to escrowed proceeds if the minority owner never establishes a claim, whether any equivalent exists for gas or for other minerals, and any Virginia decision applying the section.
A mineral interest unused for twenty years can be extinguished by the surface owner
verifiedRCW 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.
Any mineral interest, if unused for a period of twenty years, may be extinguished by the surface owner as set forth in RCW 78.22.050 and 78.22.060.
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.
Nine acts count as use, including paying the tax and recording a transfer
verifiedRCW 78.22.030, Acts constituting use of mineral interest
The statute lists nine things that count as using a mineral interest, and any one of them restarts the owner's position. Production, injection or storage operations, rents or royalties paid to delay or enjoy the interest, use on a tract the interest may be pooled or unitized with, production from a common vein or seam for coal and other solid minerals, taxes paid on the interest, any use the creating instrument authorises, a recorded sale, lease, mortgage or other transfer, and a filed statement of claim. Two of those require nobody to touch the ground: paying the tax, and recording a transfer. So in Washington the paper trail alone can keep an interest alive.
A mineral interest is used if: (1) Any minerals produced have been in connection with the mineral interest; ... (6) Taxes have been paid on such mineral interest; ... (8) A sale, lease, mortgage, or other transfer of the mineral interest has been recorded in the county auditor's office in the county in which the land affected by the mineral interest is located prior to the end of the twenty-year period set forth in RCW 78.22.010 or within two years after June 7, 1984, whichever is later; or (9) A statement of claim has been filed by the owner of the mineral interest in the manner set forth in RCW 78.22.040 or 78.22.060.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at RCW 78.22.030 on 2026-08-01, all nine subsections. Subsection (6) puts Washington with Kansas, where paying the property tax on the interest is a qualifying use, and against Nebraska, which answers that question the other way. Subsection (8) is the less obvious one and it is doing real work: a recorded mortgage of the interest is a use, so an owner who borrowed against the minerals and recorded it has satisfied the statute without any mineral leaving the ground. The two years after June 7, 1984 alternative appears in subsections (8) and (9) and in 78.22.040, and it is a transition window for interests already twenty years idle when the act took effect, not a live deadline now.
Sixty days notice, and the county treasurer must give the surface owner your address for nothing
verifiedRCW 78.22.050, Extinguishment of mineral interest, procedure
A surface owner who wants the interest must first serve sixty days notice of intention to file a claim of abandonment and extinguishment, personally or by registered mail to the mineral owner's last known address. To find that address the statute puts a public official at the surface owner's disposal: the county treasurer has to supply the current mineral interest owner's name and address as they appear on the county property tax records, without charge. Only if the treasurer does not know the owner, and due diligence fails, may notice go by publication, once a week for three consecutive weeks. The notice has six required contents and must say plainly that the claim will be filed unless the mineral owner files a statement of claim first.
The county treasurer shall supply the name and address of the current mineral interest owner as they appear on the county property tax records to the surface owner without charge.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at RCW 78.22.050 on 2026-08-01, all four subsections. The affidavit of publication the surface owner files afterwards has to contain either a statement that the notice was served or mailed and the address used, or a detailed description including dates of the efforts made to find the owner with due diligence, which is how the due diligence requirement is given teeth. What the reader should take from this rule is a practical thing rather than a legal one: the address the treasurer will hand over is the one on the tax roll, so a mineral owner whose address there is decades out of date has arranged their own default.
Filing the claim conclusively extinguishes the interest, and a dormant mineral index records who filed what
verifiedRCW 78.22.060, Presumption of extinguishment, conditions, statement of claim
Once the sixty days run out, the surface owner files the claim of abandonment together with the notice and the affidavit of publication and pays the fee, and the mineral interest is conclusively presumed extinguished. A mineral owner who files a statement of claim inside the sixty days stops it, and the auditor records, indexes and makes special notation of that filing. Washington then keeps the whole contest in one place. The county auditor records every statement of claim and every notice and affidavit in a dormant mineral interest index, cross-references the current owner against the original holder named in the creating instrument, and where possible writes a marginal notation on the original instrument itself.
Upon payment of fees provided in RCW 36.18.010, and if the surface owner files the claim of abandonment and extinguishment, together with a copy of the notice and the affidavit of publication, as required in RCW 78.22.050, in the county auditor's office for the county where such interest is located then the mineral interest shall be conclusively presumed to be extinguished.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at RCW 78.22.060 and 78.22.070 on 2026-08-01. Conclusively presumed is the strongest form the drafting could have taken and it is the reason the sixty-day window is the whole game. The dormant mineral interest index in 78.22.070 is a statutory duty on the auditor rather than a facility a county may choose to offer, and the marginal notation requirement is qualified by when possible, which is the statute conceding that some creating instruments are too old or too awkward to annotate. No county auditor's index was opened to see how any of this is implemented in practice.
Public mineral interests are exempt, and nobody can be made to sign the protection away
verifiedRCW 78.22.080, Exemptions from claim of abandonment and extinguishment
Two short sections at the end of the chapter decide who the act does not reach and what cannot be bargained away. Mineral interests retained or owned by a public entity, and mineral interests that came out of a land exchange between a public and a private owner, are not subject to a claim of abandonment and extinguishment at all. And the chapter may not be waived at any time before the twenty-year period expires, so a mineral owner cannot be asked to contract out of the protection while the protection is still doing something.
The provisions of this chapter may not be waived at any time prior to the expiration of the twenty-year period under RCW 78.22.010.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at RCW 78.22.080 and 78.22.090 on 2026-08-01, both in full and both a single sentence. The waiver bar is drafted with a cut-off rather than absolutely: it bites prior to the expiration of the twenty years, which leaves a waiver after the period has run outside its terms. That reading is on the face of the section and no Washington decision was read on it. The public entity exemption matters more than it looks, because RCW 79.11.210 puts a mineral reservation in the state's favour into every deed of state land, and those reserved interests are the ones the exemption protects.
West Virginia has no dormant mineral statute
verifiedWest Virginia Code, chapter and article indexes
No West Virginia statute found on this record lapses or extinguishes a severed mineral interest for non use. There is no dormant mineral act, no notice of intent to preserve to file and no notice of lapse to record. What West Virginia has instead, for a mineral property whose owners cannot all be found or will not all agree, is the Cotenancy Act, which lets a three-quarters majority consent to development and compensates the rest rather than ending anybody's interest.
Checked July 31, 2026. Established by enumerating the code, and by a different instrument again from the ones used for Texas, New Mexico and Montana, because West Virginia's own search is broken. THAT IS WORTH RECORDING FIRST: the site's search returns "0 result" for the word dormant, and it also returns "0 result" for the control phrase "surface owner", which certainly does appear, because section 22-7-3 is titled Compensation of surface owners for drilling operations and is quoted elsewhere on this page. A zero from that search therefore means nothing at all, and validating the instrument against a control is what revealed it. So the negative rests on enumeration instead. All 139 chapter titles of the West Virginia Code were listed and read on 2026-07-31: exactly two are mineral chapters, chapter 37B, Mineral Development, which is the Cotenancy Act, and chapter 37C, Mineral Development, which is information reporting and payments to owners. Neither lapses an interest. The two chapters where the other states on this record put their dormant mineral acts were then enumerated article by article: chapter 36, Estates and Property, has 15 articles and none concerns mineral lapse, and chapter 37, Real Property, has 20 articles and none concerns it either. For comparison, Ohio's act sits in its estates chapter and Michigan's in its property chapter. WHAT THIS DOES NOT EXCLUDE: a lapse provision sitting in a chapter outside those enumerated whose title does not mention minerals, and any judge-made doctrine, neither of which this method would catch. The chapter and article listings are built by the site in the browser and are not visible to a plain fetch, which is why this took a browser.
A severed mineral interest lapses if it was not used in the previous twenty years
verifiedWis. 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.
Except as provided in par. (b) or (c), an interest in minerals lapses if the interest in minerals was not used during the previous 20 years.
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.
The lapse can be cured at any time, until the surface owner records first
verifiedWis. Stat. s. 706.057(5), Cure of lapse
This is the provision Wisconsin was read for. A lapse is not the end of the interest and it carries no deadline for putting it right. The owner of a lapsed interest cures it by recording a statement of claim, and may do so at any point until the surface owner records their own claim to the lapsed interest, or until such a claim takes effect, whichever is later. So the twenty years do not decide who ends up with the minerals. What decides it is which of the two gets to the register of deeds first, and the mineral owner can win that race decades late.
The lapse of an interest in minerals under sub. (3) is cured if the owner of the interest in minerals records a statement of claim complying with all of the requirements of sub. (4) before the surface owner records a statement of claim under sub. (6) (a) or before a statement of claim takes effect under sub. (6) (b) 1., whichever is later.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Wis. Stat. s. 706.057(5) on 2026-08-01, with sub. (4) for what the statement of claim must contain: the owner's name and address, a description of the location and boundary of the interest, and a reference to the recorded instrument that created it, recorded with the register of deeds for the county. The surface owner has a corresponding trap in sub. (6)(b): a claim recorded BEFORE the interest lapses takes effect when it lapses, but is void six years after recording if the lapse has not happened by then, so nobody can camp on a claim indefinitely. The practical reading for a mineral owner is that a Wisconsin interest is never quietly gone. Until somebody else has filed, filing is still open.
Three years to sue after the surface owner claims, and then the interest merges into the surface
verifiedWis. Stat. s. 706.057(9), Determination of ownership
Losing the race is still not the end. For three years after the surface owner's claim is recorded, or after it takes effect, whichever is later, the mineral owner may bring an action in the circuit court for the county for a declaratory judgment on who owns the interest. The court decides one question: whether the owner used the interest in time or cured the lapse in time. If they did, it declares the interest not lapsed. If they did not, it affirms the surface owner's claim. On that judgment, or at the end of the three years if nobody sues, ownership reverts to the surface owner and title to the mineral interest is merged with title to the surface.
Upon the issuance of a judgment affirming the surface owner's claim or, if no action is brought under par. (a), at the end of the 3-year period after the surface owner's claim is recorded or at the end of the 3-year period after the claim takes effect as provided under sub. (6) (b) 1., whichever is later, the ownership of the interest in minerals reverts to the owner of the land under which the lapsed interest in minerals is located and title to the interest in minerals is merged with the title to the surface of the land.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Wis. Stat. s. 706.057(9) on 2026-08-01, all three paragraphs. The word to notice in the outcome is MERGED. Wisconsin does not simply move the interest to the surface owner and leave it standing as a separate estate; it ends the severance and puts the two estates back together. That has consequences a bare transfer would not, and none of them was read. The three-year window is real time for a mineral owner who finds out late, and it is measured from the surface owner's filing rather than from anything the mineral owner knew, so it depends on the same public record the cure does.
Any waiver of the lapse section is void, without qualification
verifiedWis. Stat. s. 706.057(10), Waiver; limitation
The section ends with one sentence that cannot be drafted around. No person may waive or agree to waive its provisions, and any waiver or agreement of that type is void. There is no timing condition and no exception for a bargain freely struck.
No person may waive or agree to waive the provisions of this section and any waiver or agreement of this type is void.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Wis. Stat. s. 706.057(10) on 2026-08-01. Worth setting beside Washington's equivalent, which is drafted with a cut-off: RCW 78.22.090 bars waiver at any time prior to the expiration of the twenty-year period, which on its face leaves a waiver after the period has run outside its terms. Wisconsin's has no such edge. Note also who the protection can run against here: because the cure right in sub. (5) has no deadline, voiding waivers keeps that cure available to an owner who might otherwise have signed it away in the instrument that created the interest.
Nothing found in the mineral title or the property title ends a mineral interest for non use
verifiedNothing read for this record lapses, extinguishes or reverts a severed Wyoming mineral interest for non use. There is no dormant mineral act among the sections of Title 30, Mines and Minerals, or Title 34, Property, Conveyances and Security Transactions. There is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim or notice of intent to preserve to record, and no notice of lapse for a surface owner to file. What Wyoming legislates about instead is the relationship between the two estates while both exist: the conditions on entry, the damages owed to the surface owner, and, for wind, a bar on severing a second resource from the surface at all.
This act may be cited as the "Wind Energy Rights Act."
Checked July 31, 2026. THE INSTRUMENT BEHIND THIS NEGATIVE, so a reader can repeat it. The Wyoming Legislature publishes each title as a single PDF. Title 30 and Title 34 were fetched whole and extracted with pdftotext -layout, giving 313 KB and 468 KB of text, and every section heading in both was enumerated: 202 in Title 30 and 950 in Title 34, 1,152 headings in all. The word "dormant" appears in none of them and in neither title's full text. The word "lapse" appears in no heading in either title. Controls on the same headings confirm the enumeration is working: "abandon" returns four headings in Title 30 and five in Title 34, "record" seventeen in Title 34 and "convey" twenty. What this cannot exclude is a provision in a title that was not read, or a judge-made doctrine, and this record says so rather than overclaiming. The quote attached to this rule is deliberately the citation clause of the Wind Energy Rights Act rather than anything about dormancy, because there is no provision to quote: it is here so the rule carries verbatim text from a source that was actually read, and the substance of the negative is the enumeration described above.
Where a court can act for an owner nobody can find
This is the part a yes or no answer hides, and it matters most to exactly the people most likely to be reassured by the word no. Each of these states has a statute pointed at the same practical problem a dormant mineral act is pointed at, which is a tract that cannot be developed because somebody in the chain cannot be found. In most of them the first answer is not to take the interest but to supply the missing owner with somebody who can act for them, though at least one also lets the surface owner go straight at the interest itself. Where that road ends differs, and so does what the owner has to do about it, so this is set out one state at a time rather than summarised. Each state links to the sections it comes from:
- Georgia Do any ONE of three things and the claim fails, because the test is conjunctive: work the minerals, ATTEMPT to work them, or simply pay the ad valorem taxes on them. Seven years of all three absences is the shortest exposure on this record, but nothing happens to you in silence, because the surface owner has to file a petition in the superior court for the county and serve you as in an in rem proceeding, including by publication, so stay findable and watch the legal organ. Better still, get outside the statute altogether: it does not apply to a lease for a specific number of years, nor to an owner who has leased the minerals IN WRITING to a licensed mining operator
- Illinois Stay findable. Everything here turns on the owner being unknown or missing, and a surface owner can take the interest by statutory adverse possession in as little as a year
- Kentucky Stay findable. A court can lease for a missing owner, and after seven years of production convey the interest to the surface owner
- Maryland Record a notice of intent to preserve, and know which side of forty years you are on. At twenty years unused with nothing recorded a surface owner can sue to terminate, but the court MUST let you file a late notice as the price of dismissal if you pay their litigation expenses. At forty years that rescue is gone. A general reference to all your mineral interests in the county is enough for the notice, so one filing covers scattered fractions. Separately, stay findable: a court can trust a missing mineral owner interest, lease it to the surface owner, and convey it to them after five uncontested years
- Montana Stay findable. Nothing lapses, but a court can appoint a trustee to lease for an owner it cannot find
- Pennsylvania Stay findable. Nothing lapses, but a court can appoint a bank to lease for an owner it cannot find
- South Dakota Use it or record a statement of claim before the twenty-three years run out, and keep an address on file at the register of deeds in the county where the interest is. That second one is not housekeeping: the statute makes maintaining an address the mineral owner’s own obligation and treats failing to do it as a waiver of the right to be posted the notice that the interest is lapsing. If notice is published anyway you have sixty days from the end of publication to record a claim. Do not rely on a 43-30B trust: a court can appoint the county treasurer to lease your minerals and hold the money for you, and the statute says in terms that none of that counts as using the interest
- Virginia Stay findable, and defend the claim if you are sued. A court can lease for a missing coal owner and the money escheats after five years, and two thirds of the coal can have a court lease your share even when you are not missing
In Montana and Pennsylvania the interest itself is not at risk at all, which is worth saying plainly: nothing can take it away, and a court can nevertheless authorise a lease of your minerals while you are not there, with the money held for you until you turn up. That is a materially different thing to know than "no".
A court appoints a trustee to lease for an owner nobody can find
verifiedWhere a Montana mineral interest is owned by someone whose whereabouts cannot reasonably be ascertained, another owner of an interest in the same minerals may petition the district court to declare a trust in that person's favour. On proof of a diligent but unsuccessful effort to locate them, and that a trustee is in the best interest of all the owners, the court appoints the clerk of court or the Department of Revenue as trustee and may authorise the trustee to execute a lease, ratification or division order on the absent owner's behalf.
Any person who owns an interest in minerals underlying a tract of land may petition the district court of the county in which the tract or a portion of the tract is located to declare a trust in favor of other persons also owning or claiming an interest in the minerals underlying the tract if their place of residence and present whereabouts is unknown and cannot reasonably be ascertained.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 82-1-302, enacted in 1979 and amended in 1997. This is the provision that makes Montana's dormancy answer worth reading rather than just recording. Every other state on this record that has addressed the unfindable mineral owner has done it by taking something away or by holding money: Ohio, North Dakota and Michigan can end the interest, and Oklahoma routes the money to a state fund. Montana keeps the interest with its owner and supplies a trustee to act for them, so the tract can be developed without the absent owner losing anything. The petition is brought by another owner of an interest in the same minerals, not by the surface owner, which is a different alignment of interests again. Two limits are in the text: the court appoints the clerk of court first and the Department of Revenue only if the clerk declines, and the authority granted is to execute a lease or related instrument on the terms the court approves rather than to sell the interest.
The money is held for the owner, and the fees do not come out of it
verifiedAll bonuses, rentals, royalties and other income from a Montana unlocatable owner trust are paid to the trustee and held until the owner claims them, and the trust stays in force until they do. Trustee and attorney fees may not be paid out of the trust proceeds. Half the interest earned goes to the Department of Revenue, or to the county general fund where the clerk of court is trustee, to cover administration.
Trustee or attorney fees may not be paid from the trust proceeds.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 82-1-304. The rule that fees cannot be taken from the proceeds is the part worth knowing, because it is what stops the mechanism eating the absent owner's money while they are absent. Administration is instead funded from half the interest earned on the trust. The trust must be kept in force until the unlocatable owners have successfully claimed their share and filed the notice section 82-1-306 provides for, and the trustee distributes only on the order of the district court. Two limits: the funds are subject to Montana's abandoned property provisions in Title 70, chapter 9, which were not read for this record, so what happens to money nobody ever claims is not established here; and the trustee must invest prudently under the standard in section 72-38-902, which was also not read.
A court declares a trust and a bank leases for the owners nobody can find
verifiedDormant Oil and Gas Act, Act of Jul. 11, 2006, P.L. 1134, No. 115, § 4
Any person who owns an interest in the oil and gas under a Pennsylvania tract may petition the court of common pleas to declare a trust in favour of all unknown owners of an interest in it. The petitioner must show a diligent effort to locate them, that the effort failed, and that a trustee is in the best interest of all the owners. The court then appoints a financial institution authorised to do business in Pennsylvania as trustee, and authorises it to execute oil or gas leases on terms the court approves.
Following a determination that the requirements of subsection (b) have been met, the court shall appoint a financial institution authorized to do business in this Commonwealth as trustee of a trust for the unknown owner or owners and shall authorize the trustee to execute and deliver one or more oil or gas leases or other instruments on terms and conditions approved by the court.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at section 4 of the act. This is the same instinct as Montana's trust for unlocatable mineral owners and the machinery differs in ways worth comparing. Pennsylvania requires the trustee to be a financial institution authorised to do business in the Commonwealth; Montana appoints the clerk of court, or the Department of Revenue if the clerk declines. Pennsylvania opens the petition to a wider class: the petitioner's interest may be in fee, by lease, by royalty, or by ownership of correlative rights in an oil and gas reservoir, where Montana's section speaks of a person who owns an interest in the minerals. Both require a diligent but unsuccessful effort to locate, and both require the court to find a trustee is in the best interest of all owners. The act defines an unknown owner as one who is unknown or whose present residence or other address cannot be found by reasonable efforts.
Pay the trustee within six months or pay the costs of collection
verifiedDormant Oil and Gas Act, Act of Jul. 11, 2006, P.L. 1134, No. 115, §§ 5 to 7
All bonuses, rental payments, royalties and other income due to unknown Pennsylvania owners must be paid to the trustee until the trust is terminated, and the trust remains in force until the unknown owners have been identified to the trustee's satisfaction and received their share. A lessee or other payor who pays the trustee is protected from further claims by those owners. A payor who fails to pay within six months of the money falling due is liable for all attorney fees and court costs of collection, with interest.
Any person who fails to pay any bonuses, rental payments, royalties or other income due owners of interests in oil and gas who are unknown or cannot be found to the trustee within six months of the date of which those funds become due shall be liable for all attorney fees and court costs of collection, with interest to the date of payment.
Checked July 30, 2026. Read at sections 5, 6 and 7 of the act. The pairing of section 6 and section 7 is the part worth reading: paying the trustee discharges the payor, and not paying the trustee within six months costs the payor the fees and costs of collection with interest. That is a sharper incentive on the operator than anything in Montana's equivalent, which instead protects the absent owner by barring trustee and attorney fees from the trust proceeds. Two limits recorded here rather than claimed: the trust is administered under Title 20 of the Consolidated Statutes, relating to decedents, estates and fiduciaries, which was not read; and funds held are subject to Article XIII.1 of the Fiscal Code on unclaimed and abandoned property, which was also not read, so what becomes of money nobody ever claims is not established.
Unpaid mineral proceeds are named in the unclaimed property act and then given no period of their own
verifiedSDCL 43-41B-1, Definitions and use of terms
South Dakota's Uniform Unclaimed Property Act names unpaid mineral proceeds once, in the definition of intangible property, listing them alongside moneys, checks, drafts, deposits, interest, dividends, royalties, vendor checks, income, unpaid commissions, unpaid overcharges and unpaid accounts payable. Having named them it gives them nothing further: there is no mineral-specific dormancy period, no aggregation rule for proceeds one holder is keeping for one owner, and no provision distinguishing suspended royalty from any other unpaid balance. So the general rule governs, and it is a short one. All intangible property held in the ordinary course of a holder's business that has remained unclaimed by the owner for more than three years after it became payable or distributable is presumed abandoned, and property counts as payable or distributable even though the owner never demanded it or presented the instrument required to collect it.
"Intangible property," includes: (a) Moneys, checks, drafts, deposits, interest, dividends, unpaid mineral proceeds, royalties, vendor checks, income, unpaid commissions, unpaid overcharges, and unpaid accounts payable
Checked August 4, 2026. Chapter 43-41B read whole on 2026-08-04, 73,495 characters, with mineral returning a single occurrence, the one quoted here, against a control of the general presumption section. Idaho and Maine do the same thing, naming mineral proceeds in a definition and attaching no period to them.
Read those against the states in the section above. The difference is not whether the legislature acted, because all of them acted. It is what the legislature was willing to do to an owner who is not answering.
Is a state even allowed to do this?
It is a fair question to ask of a statute that can take a piece of real property from somebody who has done nothing wrong, and it is not a question of state law. It was put to the Supreme Court of the United States, and answered.
A state may end an unused mineral interest without warning the owner first
verifiedTexaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U.S. 516 (1982)
The Supreme Court of the United States held that a state may condition the retention of a severed mineral interest on the owner using it or filing a statement of claim, and that where it does, the owner has no constitutional right to be told that the period of non use is about to expire. The Court reasoned that a state which may impose the burden of using an interest or filing a claim may impose the lesser burden of keeping informed about one's own property.
We have held that the State may impose on an owner of a mineral interest the burden of using that interest or filing a current statement of claim. We think it follows inexorably that the State may impose on him the lesser burden of keeping informed of the use or nonuse of his own property. We discern no procedural defect in this statute.
Checked July 31, 2026. Read in the opinion itself, fetched as the Library of Congress copy of the bound United States Reports volume 454 and extracted with pdftotext. The quotation is from the Opinion of the Court and not from the syllabus, which the Reporter of Decisions prepares and which is not part of the opinion. This is the federal constitutional answer to the question every dormant mineral act raises, and it is why a state can run one without notifying anybody. The Court also held that there is no taking, on the reasoning that it is the owner's failure to use the property rather than the state's action that causes the lapse, and it distinguished Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. on the ground that Mullane involved no abandonment. THE DECISION WAS 5 TO 4. Justice Stevens delivered the opinion, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justices Blackmun, Rehnquist and O'Connor; Justice Brennan dissented, joined by Justices White, Marshall and Powell, and would have distinguished Mullane on the ground that these were incorporeal interests that had not been directly attacked, seized, possessed, used or depleted. TWO LIMITS ON WHAT THIS ESTABLISHES, both important. The statute before the Court carried a two year grace period after its effective date, and the Court leaned on that in holding that owners had a fair opportunity to learn of the Act; nothing here says what the result would be without one. And the Court was reviewing the Indiana Act as it stood in 1982, which it described as reverting a lapsed interest to the current surface owner. The provision as codified today reverts it to the owner of the interest out of which it was carved. Whether that is a substantive change or a recodification is NOT established on this record.
Two things about that answer are worth holding onto, and both are in the rule above rather than in anybody's summary of it. It was decided by five votes to four, so it is settled law and it was not an easy call. And the Court leaned on features of the particular statute in front of it, including a two year grace period after the Act took effect and a broad list of things that counted as using an interest. Where the constitutional line falls for a harsher statute is not something this record can tell you.
The no states this page cannot answer for
Every state has a row in the status table, and most of those rows say the state has not been read yet. That is not a placeholder for an answer this page is withholding. It means nobody has opened that state's code for this record, so there is no answer here to give, and a national summary invented to fill the space would be exactly the thing this site exists not to publish.
If your state is not in the table above, the question you want answered is narrow and specific: does my state's code contain a dormant mineral act, and if so what is its period and what notice does it require. That is a reading of one state's statutes, and it is what happens to a state before it appears here.
What can actually end a mineral interest
Disuse is not the mechanism. The mechanisms are events, and the one people ask about most is adverse possession, because it is the one that does not require the owner to sign anything. Colorado has been read on it and the answer comes in two halves that are worth reading together.
Colour of title plus paid taxes plus possession, for seven years, or fifteen on wild land
verifiedArk. Code Ann. § 18-11-106(a), with §§ 18-11-102 and 18-11-103
What Arkansas has instead of a dormancy statute is an adverse possession rule that runs on the tax roll. Ark. Code 18-11-106(a) requires the claimant and those under whom they claim to have actual or constructive possession of the property AND either to have held colour of title for at least seven years while paying the ad valorem taxes on it, or to have held colour of title for at least seven years to contiguous property while paying the taxes on that. The part that does the work is 18-11-106(a)(1)(B), because colour of title may itself be ESTABLISHED by paying the taxes: seven years of payments for unimproved and unenclosed land, or fifteen years for wild and unimproved land, provided the true owner has not also paid the taxes or made a bona fide good faith effort to pay taxes that the taxing authority then misapplied. Those two periods come from the older sections that still sit alongside it, 18-11-102 for unimproved and unenclosed land and 18-11-103 for wild and unimproved land, the second of which frames the fifteen years as creating a presumption of law that colour of title was held before the first payment. Bodies exempt from ad valorem tax are relieved of the payment limb by subsection (b) and need only possession plus colour of title for the same periods. The reason this is filed under possession rather than dormancy is that every limb of it requires actual or constructive possession as well as payment. Non-use alone does nothing in Arkansas.
For purposes of this subdivision (a)(1), color of title may be established by the person claiming adversely to the true owner by paying the ad valorem taxes for a period of at least seven (7) years for unimproved and unenclosed land or fifteen (15) years for wild and unimproved land, provided the true owner has not also paid the ad valorem taxes or made a bona fide good faith effort to pay the ad valorem taxes which were misapplied by the state and local taxing authority.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from Ark. Code 18-11-106, with 18-11-102 and 18-11-103, on the verbatim mirror. This states what the statute says. Whether any of it can be applied to a SEVERED mineral estate, which in the general law cannot be possessed by acts on the surface alone, is a question of Arkansas case law that was not read for this page, and it is stated in the gaps rather than resolved here.
Possessing the surface is not possessing the minerals
verifiedOnce the mineral estate has been severed, possession of the surface is no longer possession of the minerals, so occupying the land does not run adverse possession against a severed mineral owner.
Possession of the surface estate constitutes possession of the mineral estate if the mineral estate has not been severed from the surface estate.
Checked July 25, 2026. The sentence above is Kriss v. Mineral Rights, Inc., 911 P.2d 711, 714 (Colo. App. 1996), quoted verbatim inside Beaver Creek Ranch v. Gordman Leverich LLLP, which was fetched and read in full. Kriss itself was not reachable.
Not using a mineral interest does not lose it
partialBeaver Creek Ranch v. Gordman Leverich LLLP, No. 08CA1333 (Colo. App. May 28, 2009), quoting Kriss v. Mineral Rights, Inc., 911 P.2d 711 (Colo. App. 1996)read from FindLaw Caselaw
Non-use alone does not extinguish a severed Colorado mineral interest: losing one takes adverse possession of the minerals themselves, a conveyance, or a tax sale.
Checked July 25, 2026. What is established: no Colorado statute lapses a mineral interest for non-use, and the severance point in Kriss was read verbatim inside a fetched opinion. What is not: any fetched holding that mere non-use cannot divest an owner.
Fifteen years, and an owner can interrupt the clock by serving and recording a written notice instead of suing
verifiedC.G.S. § 52-575, Entry upon land to be made within fifteen years
No person shall make entry into any lands or tenements but within fifteen years after their right or title first descends or accrues, or within fifteen years after they have been ousted from possession, and a person not entering within that time, and their heirs, shall be utterly disabled to make such entry afterwards. But the section then supplies a way to stop the clock short of litigation. No such entry is sufficient unless, within the fifteen year period, a person claiming ownership and the right of entry and possession against somebody in actual possession gives written notice to the person in possession of the giver's intention to dispute their right of possession and to prevent them acquiring such a right; and the notice, served and recorded as provided in two named sections, shall be deemed an interruption of the use and possession and shall prevent a right being acquired by any length of continued possession afterwards, provided an action is commenced within one year after the recording. The limitation does not begin to run against the right of entry of an owner of a remainder or reversionary interest in real estate which is in the adverse possession of another until the particular estate preceding it expires.
No person shall make entry into any lands or tenements but within fifteen years next after his right or title to the same first descends or accrues or within fifteen years next after such person or persons have been ousted from possession of such land or tenements.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at C.G.S. § 52-575 on 2026-08-03. Fifteen years puts Connecticut with Vermont at the short end of this record, against twenty in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Maryland. THE INTERRUPTION DEVICE IS THE PART WITH NO COUNTERPART FOUND HERE. Everywhere else on this record an owner who wants to stop an adverse possessor has to sue, and the clock runs until they do. Connecticut lets them serve and record a written notice of intention to dispute the possession, which is deemed an interruption of the use and possession and prevents any right being acquired however long the possession continues afterwards. The condition is real and easy to miss: an action must be commenced within one year after the recording, so the notice buys a year rather than an indefinite reprieve. The remainder and reversion limb is the second thing worth knowing, because it means the clock does not run against a future interest holder while the preceding estate is still on foot. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS UNANSWERED FOR CONNECTICUT AND THE PAGE SAYS SO: nothing read addresses whether possession of the surface can ripen into ownership of a severed mineral interest, the section sets a period without stating what possession must consist of, and no Connecticut decision was fetched. WHAT IS NOT READ: §§ 47-39 and 47-40, which govern how the interruption notice is served and recorded, and which were seen only by cross reference.
Twenty years to enter, and a person under disability gets ten years after it is removed no matter how long the twenty has run
verified10 Del. C. § 7903, Extension of rights of infants and other persons under disability
No person shall make an entry into any lands, tenements or hereditaments but within twenty years next after their right or title first descended or accrued. Nor shall any person have or maintain any writ of right or action, real, personal or mixed, or make any prescription or claim to any lands, on the seisin or possession of themselves, their ancestor or predecessor, and allege any further seisin than an actual seisin of themselves, their ancestor or predecessor, of the premises sued for or claimed, within twenty years next before the writ or action. If at the time a right of entry or action first accrues the person entitled to it is an infant, or mentally ill, or imprisoned, that person or anybody claiming under them may make the entry or bring the action at any time within ten years after the disability is removed, notwithstanding that the twenty years has expired.
If at any time when a right of entry upon, or action for any lands or tenements first accrues, the person entitled to such entry, or action, is an infant, or mentally ill, or imprisoned, such person, or anyone claiming from, by, or under such person, may make the entry, or bring the action, at any time within 10 years after such disability is removed, notwithstanding the 20 years specified in §§ 7901 and 7902 of this title as limited in that behalf has expired.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 10 Del. C. §§ 7901, 7902 and 7903 on 2026-08-03, all tracing to Code 1852. Twenty years puts Delaware with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Maryland, against fifteen in Connecticut and Vermont and ten in Rhode Island. THE DISABILITY PROVISION IS THE ONE WORTH READING TWICE and it points the opposite way from most of what this record has published this week. Florida, Vermont and Connecticut all say in their title acts that no disability or lack of knowledge OF ANY KIND suspends the clock, and Massachusetts says a judgment of registration may not be opened for absence, infancy or other disability. Delaware's § 7903 says the opposite about its possession clock: an infant, a mentally ill person or a prisoner has ten years after the disability is removed NOTWITHSTANDING that the twenty years has expired. So in Delaware a minor heir's twenty years can run out entirely and the entry still be good. Those are different instruments doing different jobs and the comparison is not a contradiction, but a reader who has learned from the title acts that disability never helps would get Delaware's possession rule wrong. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS UNANSWERED FOR DELAWARE AND THE PAGE SAYS SO: nothing read addresses whether possession of the surface can ripen into ownership of a severed mineral interest, the sections set periods without stating what possession must consist of, and no Delaware decision was fetched. Section 7904 was not read.
Twenty years, all the taxes paid, and a recorded declaration that defeats the whole doctrine
verifiedIdaho Code s. 5-210, Oral claim, possession defined, payment of taxes
No action to recover real property or its possession can be maintained unless the plaintiff or an ancestor, predecessor or grantor was seized or possessed within twenty years before the action was commenced, and that section says expressly that it includes possessory rights to lands and mining claims. For a claim not founded on a written instrument, judgment or decree, land is deemed possessed and occupied only where it has been protected by a substantial enclosure or usually cultivated or improved; in no case is adverse possession established unless the land has been occupied and claimed continuously for twenty years and the claimant and their predecessors and grantors have paid all the taxes, state, county and municipal, levied and assessed on it; and the claimant must prove the enclosure or cultivation by clear and convincing evidence. And there is a way out that needs no litigation at all: adverse possession is not established under any section of the code if a written instrument has been recorded in the county real estate records declaring that it was not the intent of a party to that instrument, by permitting possession or occupation of real property, to thereby define property boundaries or ownership.
Provided further, that adverse possession shall not be considered established under the provisions of any sections of this code if a written instrument has been recorded in the real estate records kept by the county recorder of the county in which the property is located and such written instrument declares that it was not the intent of a party to such instrument, by permitting possession or occupation of real property, to thereby define property boundaries or ownership.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Idaho Code 5-203 and 5-210 on 2026-08-03. The recordable declaration was added by 2001 ch. 290 s. 2 and nothing else on this record lets a landowner switch the doctrine off by filing a piece of paper. The twenty year period in both sections came from 2006 ch. 158, which raised it from five years, so an Idaho adverse possession claim maturing today rests on occupation beginning in 2006 at the earliest. The tax payment requirement is doing real work and is worth reading beside the states where a severed mineral interest carries its own tax bill: paying all the taxes on the land is a condition of the claim, which in a state where minerals were separately assessed would be a serious obstacle to possessing them. Section 5-203 naming MINING CLAIMS expressly is unusual in a limitation statute and is the only place in either section that minerals appear. WHAT IS NOT READ, and the page says so: how any of this applies across a severance. Neither section addresses a severed mineral estate, no Idaho decision was fetched, and the ordinary proposition that possession of the surface is not possession of the minerals once they are severed has not been verified against any Idaho authority. North Carolina is the state on this record where a statute answers the question directly, and Idaho has no equivalent.
At a tax sale the surface owner can redeem the mineral owner out after ninety days
verifiedIowa Code s. 458A.20, Tax sale, redemption by owner
Because the severed interest carries its own tax bill it can be sold for its own unpaid taxes, and the statute then gives the person above it a way in. When mineral rights not owned by the landowner are sold at tax sale and the mineral owner does not redeem within ninety days after the sale, the owner of the land has from then on the same right of redemption the mineral owner had, and a redemption by the landowner terminates the mineral owner's right of redemption altogether.
When any mineral rights or interests not owned by the owner of the land are sold at tax sale, and when the owner of those mineral rights or interests does not redeem under the provisions of chapter 447 within ninety days after the tax sale, the owner of the land shall thereafter have the same right of redemption as the owner of the mineral rights or interests has, and redemption by the owner of the land shall terminate any right of redemption of the owner of the mineral rights or interests.
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at Iowa Code s. 458A.20 on 2026-08-01. This is filed under adverse possession because it is a route by which a severed interest passes to somebody else without the owner agreeing, and it is not the dormancy statute: it reaches ALL severed mineral interests, not only coal, and it is triggered by unpaid tax rather than by the calendar. The ninety days is the whole of it. Up to that point the mineral owner redeems as any owner would under chapter 447; after it the landowner may step in, and once the landowner redeems the mineral owner's own right is gone. Chapter 447, which governs redemption and would say what notice a mineral owner gets and what redemption costs, was NOT read, so nothing here describes the mechanics of the sale itself.
Twenty years, and a possessor who was simply mistaken about the boundary keeps the claim
verified14 M.R.S. s. 810-A, Mistake of boundary line
No person may commence any real or mixed action for the recovery of lands, or make an entry on them, unless within twenty years after the right to do so first accrued, or within twenty years after they or those under whom they claim were seized or possessed of the premises. Alongside that clock sits a short section about the possessor's state of mind, and it settles a question that divides states. If a person takes possession of land by mistake as to the location of the true boundary line, the possessor's mistaken belief does not defeat a claim of adverse possession. So in Maine a person who occupied ground because they thought the line ran somewhere else is not disqualified by the mistake; the belief neither helps nor hurts. The section was enacted in 1993 and amended in 2009.
If a person takes possession of land by mistake as to the location of the true boundary line, the possessor's mistaken belief does not defeat a claim of adverse possession.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 14 M.R.S. ss. 801 and 810-A on 2026-08-03. Three states on this record have now legislated about what the possessor must have believed, and no two agree. OREGON requires an honest belief that the possessor was the actual owner, held at first entry, continued throughout the vesting period, with an objective basis and reasonable in the circumstances, proved by clear and convincing evidence, which disqualifies a knowing trespasser. MAINE says a mistaken belief about the boundary does not defeat the claim, which is aimed at the opposite problem, the possessor whose good faith error would otherwise be held against them as showing no intent to claim adversely. IDAHO legislates nothing about belief and instead lets a landowner switch the whole doctrine off by recording a declaration that permitting occupation was not intended to define boundaries or ownership. THE PAGE STOPS WHERE THE OTHERS DO. Nothing read addresses a severed mineral estate, no Maine decision was fetched, and the general proposition that possession of the surface is not possession of the minerals once they are severed has not been verified against any Maine authority. Note also that s. 810-A is drawn around a BOUNDARY LINE, which is a surface concept, and nothing suggests it was written with a split estate in mind. North Carolina is the state on this record where a statute answers the mineral question directly.
Twenty years to sue for possession, with the common law doctrine of prescription expressly left alone
verifiedMd. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings s. 5-103, Actions for possession of land
Within twenty years from the date the cause of action accrues, a person must either file an action for recovery of possession of a corporeal freehold or leasehold estate in land, or enter on the land. Two savings follow and both matter for anybody trying to work out what the section reaches. It does not affect the common law doctrine of prescription as it applies to the creation of INCORPOREAL interests in land by adverse use, so easements and profits are governed by the case law rather than by this section. And it does not affect the limitation periods set out in sections 6-103 or 8-107 of the Real Property Article. The section is a limitation on the action rather than a statutory statement of what adverse possession requires: unlike Idaho, which sets out enclosure or cultivation, tax payment and a standard of proof, or Oregon, which requires an honest belief of ownership held on an objective and reasonable basis, Maryland leaves the elements of adverse possession to the common law and legislates only the clock and the alternative of re-entry.
Within 20 years from the date the cause of action accrues, a person shall: (1) File an action for recovery of possession of a corporeal freehold or leasehold estate in land; or (2) Enter on the land.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings s. 5-103 on 2026-08-03. The distinction the section draws between CORPOREAL and INCORPOREAL interests is the one a mineral owner has to think about, because it is the distinction Maryland's own dormant mineral act refuses to draw: Environment s. 15-1201(c) defines a mineral interest to include an interest whether CORPOREAL OR INCORPOREAL, expressly covering both. So the same interest can be inside 15-1201 for the purposes of being terminated for dormancy and, depending on how it was created, outside 5-103(a) and governed by prescription instead. Nothing read resolves how the two fit together and no Maryland decision was fetched, so this page states both and joins neither. The alternative of ENTRY ON THE LAND is worth a line on its own: the statute is satisfied by entering rather than by suing, which for a surface estate is a cheap act and for a severed mineral estate is close to meaningless, since there is nothing to enter without drilling or mining. WHAT IS NOT READ: sections 6-103 and 8-107 of the Real Property Article, the Maryland case law on adverse possession, and anything on whether possession of the surface can ever ripen into title to severed minerals in this state.
Twenty years on ordinary land, and on registered land no title by adverse possession can be acquired at all
verifiedMGL c. 185 § 53, Prescription, adverse possession or right of way by necessity
For unregistered land, an action for the recovery of land must be commenced, or an entry made, only within twenty years after the right of action or entry first accrued, or within twenty years after the person claiming or those under whom they claim were last seized or possessed of the premises; and where the right first accrued to an ancestor or predecessor, the twenty years runs from when it first accrued to them. There is one carve out, added for conservation: the section does not bar an action by or on behalf of a nonprofit land conservation corporation or trust for the recovery of land or interests in land held for conservation, parks, recreation, water protection or wildlife protection purposes. For REGISTERED land the answer is absolute. No title to registered land, or easement or other right in it, in derogation of the title of the registered owner, may be acquired by prescription or adverse possession, and no right of way by necessity is implied under a conveyance of registered land.
No title to registered land, or easement or other right therein, in derogation of the title of the registered owner, shall be acquired by prescription or adverse possession. Nor shall a right of way by necessity be implied under a conveyance of registered land.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at MGL c. 185 § 53 and c. 260 §§ 21 and 22 on 2026-08-03. The registered land rule is the flattest statement on this record on the subject and it runs in the mineral owner's favour rather than against them, which is worth noticing because everything else about registration in Massachusetts runs the other way. A registered owner cannot be dispossessed by anybody's possession, so if a severed interest is noted on a certificate it cannot be adversely possessed away; the exposure is at the moment of registration, not afterwards. The conservation carve out in c. 260 § 21 is a second thing worth naming, because it is the only exemption from an adverse possession clock on this record that is granted by the identity of the CLAIMANT rather than by the nature of the land or the conduct of the possessor. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS UNANSWERED FOR MASSACHUSETTS AND THE PAGE SAYS SO. Whether possession of the surface can ripen into ownership of a severed mineral interest under unregistered title is not addressed by anything read, c. 260 § 21 sets a period without stating what possession must consist of, and no Massachusetts decision was fetched. Compare the states that legislate the content: Idaho lists enclosure and cultivation and requires every tax paid; Maine says a mistaken belief about a boundary does not defeat the claim; Oregon requires an honest belief of ownership.
Ten years of actual adverse possession vests a full and complete title, and the statute says nothing about severed minerals
verifiedMiss. Code Ann. § 15-1-13, with §§ 15-1-7 and 15-1-9
Miss. Code 15-1-13(1) is the shortest route by which Mississippi land changes hands without a deed. Ten years' actual adverse possession by a person claiming to be the owner for that time, uninterruptedly continued for ten years by occupancy, descent, conveyance or otherwise, IN WHATEVER WAY SUCH OCCUPANCY MAY HAVE COMMENCED OR CONTINUED, vests in every actual occupant or possessor a full and complete title. There is no requirement of colour of title and none of paying the taxes, which is what distinguishes it from Arkansas next door, where every limb of the doctrine runs through the tax roll. Two qualifications sit in the statute. Minors and persons of unsound mind may sue within ten years after the disability is removed, under 15-1-7, though the saving for unsoundness of mind can never extend beyond thirty-one years. And subsection (2), for claims not matured as of 1 July 1998, gives a landowner a cheap defence in the specific case of a fence or driveway built on their property: filing a written notice with the chancery clerk within the ten years, describing the property and stating that the fence or driveway was built without permission, takes the case outside subsection (1); and the statute adds that failing to file such a notice creates no inference that the property has been adversely possessed. Alongside it, 15-1-7 bars an entry or an action to recover land more than ten years after the right first accrued, and 15-1-9 applies the same period to a claim in equity, with time running from discovery in the case of concealed fraud. WHAT THE STATUTE DOES NOT SAY is anything at all about a mineral estate that has been severed from the surface. Chapter 1 of Title 15 was read end to end, forty-three sections, and the word mineral does not appear in it.
Ten (10) years' actual adverse possession by any person claiming to be the owner for that time of any land, uninterruptedly continued for ten (10) years by occupancy, descent, conveyance, or otherwise, in whatever way such occupancy may have commenced or continued, shall vest in every actual occupant or possessor of such land a full and complete title.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from Miss. Code 15-1-13, with 15-1-7 and 15-1-9, on the verbatim mirror, chapter walked end to end. Title 15 was reached only after chapters 89-1 and 89-5 had been read and shown to contain nothing on the subject: Mississippi keeps limitation periods in a title of their own, which is the fourth state on this record where the governing rule is outside the title named for the subject. Whether ten years of surface occupancy can carry a severed mineral estate is a question of Mississippi case law and is stated in the gaps rather than answered here.
Ten years to sue for land, and the statute says nothing about what possession has to look like
verifiedRSMo s. 516.010, Actions for recovery of lands commenced, when
No action for the recovery of any lands, tenements or hereditaments, or for the recovery of possession of them, may be commenced, had or maintained by any person, whether citizen, denizen, alien, resident or nonresident of the state, unless it appears that the plaintiff, or an ancestor, predecessor, grantor or other person under whom the plaintiff claims, was seized or possessed of the premises in question within ten years before the action was commenced. Ten years is the shortest limitation period on this record for an action to recover land, against twenty in Idaho, Oregon and Maryland. And the section is purely a limitation: unlike Idaho, which requires substantial enclosure or usual cultivation plus payment of all taxes proved by clear and convincing evidence, or Oregon, which requires an honest belief of ownership held on an objective and reasonable basis, Missouri legislates the clock and leaves every element of what adverse possession actually requires to the case law.
No action for the recovery of any lands, tenements or hereditaments, or for the recovery of the possession thereof, shall be commenced, had or maintained by any person, whether citizen, denizen, alien, resident or nonresident of this state, unless it appear that the plaintiff, his ancestor, predecessor, grantor or other person under whom he claims was seized or possessed of the premises in question, within ten years before the commencement of such action.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSMo s. 516.010 on 2026-08-03, RSMo 1939 s. 1002 with prior revisions to 1909. Chapter 516 was also enumerated for the dormancy negative and contains no occurrence of mineral, sever, dormant, abandon, marketable or root of title anywhere in its section titles, so nothing in Missouri's limitations chapter is aimed at mineral interests at all. THE PAGE STOPS HERE DELIBERATELY. Nothing read addresses a severed mineral estate, no Missouri decision was fetched, and the general proposition that possession of the surface is not possession of the minerals once they are severed has not been verified against any Missouri authority. North Carolina is the state on this record where a statute answers the question directly, by barring either side of a severance from possessing against the other without recording a yearly notice of intended use, and Missouri has no equivalent. One neighbouring section is worth knowing about for a different reason: RSMo 442.070 provides that a person may convey notwithstanding adverse possession, which means a Missouri owner whose land is occupied by somebody else can still sell what they have, and it says nothing about whether the occupier can ever get the minerals.
A patented claim that goes to the county for unpaid taxes can be prospected by a stranger and deeded to them
verifiedNRS 517.390, Affidavit and petition to explore and develop mine or claim
This is the way a Nevada mineral title actually passes out of an owner's hands without their agreement, and it runs through the revenue laws rather than through any lapse statute. Once a patented mine or mining claim has become the property of a county through operation of the state's revenue laws, any citizen of the United States may file an affidavit and petition with the board of county commissioners. The board may by order give the petitioner permission to enter the claim and explore it for valuable minerals for six months at no charge, during which no more than five hundred pounds of ore or valuable mineral may be removed, and the chapter then provides for a deed conveying title to the petitioner. A claim that has been the county's property for a year or more, and a fresh application made less than thirty days after a former prospecting permit ended, are outside the scheme.
Whenever a patented mine or mining claim has become the property of a county through operation of the revenue laws of this state, any citizen of the United States may file with the board of county commissioners of such county an affidavit and petition
Checked August 1, 2026. Read at NRS 517.390, 517.400 and 517.410 on 2026-08-01, with the headings of 517.420 and 517.430 read from the chapter's table of sections. This is filed under adverse possession rather than dormancy because it is a route by which title moves to somebody else without the owner agreeing, and it is not a lapse: the trigger is unpaid tax, not the passage of time or non use. It connects to the severance rule above, and the chain is worth stating because no single section states it. Do no development work, and the surface exemption is lost. Lose the exemption, and the surface is assessed. Fail to pay, and the claim can become the county's. Once it is the county's, a stranger may petition to prospect it. NRS 517.400 defines the amount for which a claim became the county's property as one year's taxes plus penalties and costs, and the rest of that section was not read. The conveyancing terms in 517.420 were not read, so nothing here says what the petitioner pays for the deed.
Twenty years to recover land, and only five where the claim rests on a reverter or right of re-entry
verifiedNo action for the recovery of real estate may be brought after twenty years from the time the right to recover first accrued to the party claiming it or to some person under whom they claim. But where the action rests on rights based on a possibility of reverter, a right of re-entry, or an executory interest, the period is five years from the time the right to recover possession or the right of re-entry first accrued. The second limb was added in 2008 and is the shortest limitation on this record for getting land back. The conveyancing chapter contains a companion provision limiting possibilities of reverter, rights of re-entry and executory interests, which applies to legal future interests created by deed, will or power of appointment and not to beneficial interests created by or through trusts.
II. No action for the recovery of real estate pursuant to rights based on a possibility of reverter, right of re-entry, or executory interest shall be brought after 5 years from the time the right to recover possession or the right of re-entry first accrued to the party claiming it or to some persons under whom the party claims.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 508:2 on 2026-08-03, subsection II added by 2008 c. 228, with the companion at RSA 477:3-b. The five year limb is worth a mineral owner's attention for a reason that is not obvious. Conveyances of minerals are sometimes drafted as determinable interests, where the mineral estate reverts on some condition, and where an interest of that kind exists in New Hampshire the holder of the reverter has five years from accrual rather than twenty. Nothing read says this reaches minerals, and no New Hampshire decision was fetched, so the page states the shape of the rule and stops. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS ALSO UNANSWERED HERE and the page says so: nothing read addresses a severed interest of any kind, RSA 508:2 sets a period without stating what possession must look like, and the general proposition that possession of the surface is not possession of what is underneath once they are split has not been verified against any New Hampshire authority. Compare Idaho, which lists enclosure and cultivation, requires all taxes paid and clear and convincing evidence, and lets a landowner switch the doctrine off by recording a declaration; Maine, which says a mistaken belief about the boundary does not defeat the claim; and Oregon, which requires an honest belief of ownership. New Hampshire legislates the clock and nothing else.
Thirty years of possession vests title, and sixty years for woodlands or uncultivated tracts, the longest wait on this record
verifiedN.J.S.A. § 2A:14-30, with §§ 2A:14-6 to 2A:14-8 and §§ 2A:14-31 to 2A:14-34
N.J.S.A. 2A:14-30 is the route by which New Jersey land changes hands without a deed, and its two periods are the point. Thirty years' actual possession of any real estate EXCEPTING WOODLANDS OR UNCULTIVATED TRACTS, and SIXTY YEARS' actual possession of woodlands or uncultivated tracts, uninterruptedly continued by occupancy, descent, conveyance or otherwise, in whatever way the possession commenced or continued, vests a full and complete right and title in the actual possessor and bars all claims for recovery. Set that beside the rest of this record: Rhode Island and Mississippi both take ten years, Connecticut fifteen, Delaware twenty, and Illinois can extinguish a severed mineral interest in as little as one year after a presumptive-possession judgment. New Jersey's ordinary period is three times Rhode Island's and its woodland period is six times it. The distinction matters here more than it looks, because an unworked mineral tract in the New Jersey Highlands or the Pine Barrens is exactly the kind of parcel that is woodland or uncultivated, so the longer of the two periods is the one most likely to be in play. N.J.S.A. 2A:14-31 runs a parallel thirty-year bar for possession founded on a proprietary right duly laid and recorded in the office of the surveyor general or the secretary of state, or obtained by a fair bona fide purchase from a person in possession supposed to have legal title, and it vests an absolute right and title against all prior locations, rights, titles, conveyances or claims not followed by actual possession. Alongside those sit shorter provisions that bar the REMEDY rather than vesting title: 2A:14-6 requires a person with a right of entry into real estate to enter within twenty years of accrual or be barred, 2A:14-7 gives twenty years for an action at law for real estate, and 2A:14-8 gives the State of New Jersey itself the same twenty years. How the twenty-year bars and the thirty and sixty-year vesting periods fit together is a question of New Jersey case law and is stated in the gaps rather than answered here. Two savings apply. 2A:14-32 lets a person who was under eighteen, adjudicated incapacitated, or outside the United States other than on a military tour of duty when the right accrued sue within five years after the disability is removed or they are physically present in the United States, notwithstanding that the 2A:14-30 and 2A:14-31 periods have run. And 2A:14-34 provides that where a disseizor with no right or title dies seized, the descent to the disseizor's heir does not take away the right of entry of the person who had lawful title at that time. WHAT THE CHAPTER DOES NOT SAY is anything at all about a mineral estate severed from the surface. All forty-four sections were read and the word mineral does not appear in any of them.
Thirty years' actual possession of any real estate excepting woodlands or uncultivated tracts, and 60 years' actual possession of woodlands or uncultivated tracts, uninterruptedly continued by occupancy, descent, conveyance or otherwise, shall, in whatever way or manner such possession might have commenced or have been continued, vest a full and complete right and title in every actual possessor or occupier of such real estate, woodlands or uncultivated tracts, and shall be a good and sufficient bar to all claims that may be made or actions commenced by any person whatsoever for the recovery of any such real estate, woodlands or uncultivated tracts.
Checked August 4, 2026. Read on 2026-08-04 from N.J.S.A. 2A:14-30, with 2A:14-6, 2A:14-7, 2A:14-8, 2A:14-31, 2A:14-32 and 2A:14-34, on the verbatim mirror, chapter walked end to end, forty-four sections, END OF CHAIN reached at 2A:14-34. The comparison against Rhode Island, Mississippi, Connecticut, Delaware and Illinois was made by reading those states' own entries on this record rather than from memory. Whether thirty or sixty years of surface possession can carry a SEVERED mineral estate is New Jersey case law and no case law was read for this page.
Ten years, plus an honest belief you owned it, proved by clear and convincing evidence
verifiedORS s. 105.620, Acquiring title by adverse possession
A person may acquire fee simple title to real property by adverse possession only if three things hold. The person and their predecessors in interest have maintained actual, open, notorious, exclusive, hostile and continuous possession for ten years. At the time the claimant or their predecessors first entered into possession, the person entering had the honest belief that they were the actual owner, and that belief continued throughout the vesting period, had an objective basis, and was reasonable in the particular circumstances. And the person proves each element by clear and convincing evidence. Hostile possession means possession under claim of right or with colour of title, colour of title meaning the possessor claims under a written conveyance or by operation of law from someone claiming under one. Absent additional supporting facts, the grazing of livestock is insufficient to satisfy the possession requirement. Person includes the state and its political subdivisions.
At the time the person claiming by adverse possession or the person's predecessors in interest, first entered into possession of the property, the person entering into possession had the honest belief that the person was the actual owner of the property and that belief: (A) By the person and the person's predecessor in interest, continued throughout the vesting period; (B) Had an objective basis; and (C) Was reasonable under the particular circumstances.
Checked August 2, 2026. Read at ORS 105.620 on 2026-08-02. [1989 c.1069 s.1; 1991 c.109 s.2; 1999 c.950 s.1]. The honest belief requirement is a deliberate legislative narrowing and it cuts against the knowing trespasser, which is a policy choice a good many states have not made. Nothing in the section says anything about a severed mineral estate, and no Oregon decision was read, so this page states the elements and refuses to say how a court would apply them across a severance. North Carolina is the state on this record where that question has a statutory answer, G.S. 1-42, and the answer there is that neither side can possess against the other without recording a yearly notice of intended use. Oregon has no equivalent, so the ordinary doctrine is all there is: possession of the surface is not possession of the minerals once they are severed, which is a proposition of general property law that this record has not verified against any Oregon authority. WHAT IS NOT READ: ORS 12.050, the limitation on actions for the recovery of real property, and any Oregon case on adverse possession of minerals.
Ten years of possession gives conclusive title, and the owner stops the clock with a recorded notice that the possessor then has to sue on
verifiedR.I. Gen. Laws § 34-7-1, Conclusive title by peaceful possession under claim of title
Where a person, or those from whom they derive title, either by themselves, their tenants or their lessees, have been for the space of ten years in the uninterrupted, quiet, peaceful and actual seisin and possession of any lands, tenements or hereditaments during that time, claiming the same as their proper, sole and rightful estate in fee simple, that actual seisin and possession is allowed to give and make a good and rightful title to them and their heirs and assigns forever; and a plaintiff suing for the recovery of such lands may rely upon the possession as CONCLUSIVE TITLE, the chapter pleaded in bar being good, valid and effectual in law to bar the action. Persons under age, of unsound mind, imprisoned or beyond the limits of the United States are not prejudiced if they sue within ten years after the impediment is removed, and a reversioner or remainderman is not barred if they pursue their title within ten years after their right of action accrues. An owner who anticipates that somebody may obtain title, or a way, easement or privilege, by possession may give written notice to the person claiming or using the land of an intention to dispute any right arising from that claim or use; the notice, signed by the owner, a guardian or an agent, may be served by any disinterested person making return under oath, and must be recorded within three months in the records of land evidence in the town where the land lies. So served and recorded, it is deemed an interruption of the use and prevents any right being acquired by the continuance of the use for any length of time afterwards. The notice is then considered so far a disturbance of the claim as to let the party claiming bring an action to try the right, and if they prevail they recover full costs.
the actual seisin and possession shall be allowed to give and make a good and rightful title to the person or persons, their heirs and assigns forever; and any plaintiff suing for the recovery of any such lands may rely upon the possession as conclusive title thereto
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 34-7-1, 34-7-2, 34-7-6 and 34-7-7 on 2026-08-03, all tracing to G.L. 1896 ch. 205. TWO THINGS HERE ARE UNUSUAL AND THE SECOND IS THE BETTER ONE. FIRST, TEN YEARS AND WHAT IT PRODUCES. Ten years is at the short end of this record, with Idaho and Oregon, against fifteen in Connecticut and Vermont and twenty in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Maryland. And the section is not drafted as a limitation on an action but as a source of title: the possession GIVES AND MAKES a good and rightful title in fee simple, and a plaintiff may rely on it as conclusive. Massachusetts and Connecticut bar the entry; Rhode Island vests the estate. SECOND, THE INTERRUPTION AND WHO IT PUTS TO THE TROUBLE OF SUING. Rhode Island and Connecticut both let an owner stop the clock without litigating, by serving and recording a written notice of intent to dispute, and this record has found the device nowhere else. But the two states then allocate the burden in opposite directions. Connecticut's C.G.S. § 52-575 makes the interruption good only if the owner commences an action WITHIN ONE YEAR of recording the notice, so the notice buys the owner a year and then expires. Rhode Island's § 34-7-6 requires nothing further of the owner at all, and § 34-7-7 instead treats the notice as a disturbance of the possessor's claim, giving THE POSSESSOR the right to sue to try the right, with full costs if they prevail. Same instrument, opposite defaults: in Connecticut inaction by the owner undoes the interruption, in Rhode Island inaction by the possessor confirms it. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS UNANSWERED FOR RHODE ISLAND AND THE PAGE SAYS SO: nothing read addresses whether possession of the surface can ripen into ownership of a severed mineral interest, the chapter sets a period and describes possession without saying anything about split estates, and no Rhode Island decision was fetched. Also not read: §§ 34-7-3 to 34-7-5, which deny prescriptive acquisition of light and air, of a footway and of utility rights-of-way, and §§ 34-7-8 and 34-7-9 on shore rights and land preserved for open space, conservation or cemetery purposes.
Ten years, and until then somebody else's occupation is presumed to be under and subordinate to your title
verifiedS.C. Code s. 15-67-210, Presumption of possession
In every action for the recovery of real property or its possession, the person establishing a legal title to the premises is presumed to have been possessed of it within the time required by law, and the occupation of the premises by any other person is deemed to have been under and in subordination to the legal title, unless it appears that the premises have been held and possessed adversely to that legal title for ten years before the action was commenced. Where the occupant or those they claim under entered under a claim of title exclusive of any other right, founded on a written instrument as a conveyance or on a judgment or decree, and there has been continued occupation for ten years, the premises included are deemed to have been held adversely, except that where the land is a tract divided into lots the possession of one lot is not possession of another. For a claim under a written instrument, judgment or decree, land is deemed possessed and occupied where it has been usually cultivated or improved, where it has been protected by a substantial enclosure, where, although not enclosed, it has been used for the supply of fuel or of fencing timber, for the purposes of husbandry or for the ordinary use of the occupant, and where a known farm or single lot has been partly improved, in which case the unimproved part counts for the same period as the improved part according to the usual course and custom of the adjoining country.
The occupation of such premises by any other person shall be deemed to have been under and in subordination to the legal title unless it appear that such premises have been held and possessed adversely to such legal title for ten years before the commencement of such action.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at S.C. Code ss. 15-67-210, 15-67-220 and 15-67-230 on 2026-08-03, all tracing to the 1870 and 1873 acts. Ten years, which is the same as Missouri and half of Idaho, Oregon and Maryland. The presumption in 15-67-210 is the part that matters most and it is stated the way a record owner would want it: occupation by anybody else is presumed to be permissive, and the burden of showing ten years of adverse holding sits on the occupant. Note how the acts of possession in 15-67-230 are drawn, because they are agricultural and nineteenth century and none of them describes anything a mineral owner does: cultivation, enclosure, the supply of fuel or fencing timber, husbandry, the ordinary use of the occupant. THE PAGE STOPS HERE DELIBERATELY. Nothing read addresses a severed mineral estate, no South Carolina decision was fetched, and the general proposition that possession of the surface is not possession of the minerals once they are severed has not been verified against any South Carolina authority. North Carolina, next door, is the state on this record where a statute answers the question directly, by barring either side of a severance from possessing against the other without recording a yearly notice of intended use in a special book at the register of deeds. South Carolina has no equivalent that was found.
Fifteen years to recover land or to enter, and the statute says nothing about what possession must look like
verified12 V.S.A. § 501, Recovery of lands
An action for the recovery of lands, or of the possession of them, may not be maintained unless commenced within fifteen years after the cause of action first accrues to the plaintiff or to those under whom the plaintiff claims, except as otherwise provided in the tax sale provisions of Title 32. A person having a right or title of entry into houses or lands may not enter after fifteen years from the time the right of entry accrues. Nothing in either section states what possession must consist of, and neither mentions minerals, a severed interest or a mineral estate.
Except as otherwise provided in 32 V.S.A. § 5263, an action for the recovery of lands, or the possession thereof, shall not be maintained, unless commenced within 15 years after the cause of action first accrues to the plaintiff or those under whom he or she claims.
Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 12 V.S.A. §§ 501 and 502 on 2026-08-03. Fifteen years is at the short end of this record: New Hampshire and Maryland run twenty, Idaho and Oregon ten with conditions, Maine twenty. What Vermont does NOT do is legislate the content of possession, and that is the same silence New Hampshire's RSA 508:2 keeps. Compare the states that do fill it in: Idaho lists enclosure and cultivation, requires every tax paid and clear and convincing evidence, and lets a landowner switch the doctrine off entirely by recording a declaration; Maine provides that a mistaken belief about the boundary does not defeat the claim; Oregon requires an honest belief of ownership with an objective basis. Vermont legislates the clock and leaves the rest to its courts. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS UNANSWERED FOR VERMONT AND THE PAGE SAYS SO: whether possession of the surface can ever ripen into ownership of a severed mineral interest is not addressed by anything read, and the general proposition that it cannot, once the estates are split, has not been verified against any Vermont authority. No Vermont decision was fetched. The exception in § 501 points at 32 V.S.A. § 5263, in the tax sale provisions, which was not read.
Note that the second of those is published at partial confidence with its caveat visible, because the opinion that settles its affirmative half is not reachable on any source this site is allowed to cite. That is the confidence model working rather than a gap being hidden: the claim is made at the strength the evidence actually supports, and the page says which half is which.
Three things this page is not telling you
- Whether an oil and gas lease expires. It is a different instrument and a different question, and conflating the two is the most common way this subject gets answered wrongly. A lease conveys the right to develop for a term; the mineral interest underneath it is what this page is about. Almost nothing has been read here on lease terms, which are usually a matter of what the parties wrote, so almost nothing is said about them. One state read for this record is the exception and it belongs on this page rather than in a footnote, because there the lease term is a statute and its expiry moves the minerals: North Carolina expires every oil and gas lease, and any other conveyance separating oil or gas from the freehold, at ten years unless commercial production is under way, and where production later stops for six months all rights to the oil and gas revert to the surface owner. No assignment or waiver is valid and no force majeure clause extends it. The North Carolina page sets out the rest.
- Anything about the other no states. Not that most of them do have a dormancy statute, not that most of them do not, and not a count. Fifty states have been read and that is the extent of what can be said.
- Whether your own interest is still yours. That turns on the instruments in your tract's chain of title, which is a records question rather than a question of law. The owning section covers how that search is run.
The state record shows which states are being read next. How the record is kept explains why this page is short on national claims and long on dates.
Questions people actually ask
Do mineral rights expire?
Not on their own, and not from disuse. A severed mineral interest is an estate in real property, and it stays owned until something happens to move it. What could end it for non use is a state dormant mineral act, a statute that extinguishes an unused interest after a defined period, or a marketable record title act that does not except minerals from its cure. Both were checked in each of the fifty states read for this record, and the answers are not the same in each. For any other state the honest answer is that it depends on that state's code and this record has not read it yet, which is a different statement from "no".
How long do mineral rights last?
Indefinitely, in the absence of a statute that says otherwise. There is no built-in term on a mineral interest the way there is on a lease: an interest severed from the surface in the nineteenth century is still owned by whoever inherited it, and the passage of time alone does not weaken the claim. What varies between states is whether a statute imposes an outside limit for non use, either a dormant mineral act or a marketable record title act that reaches minerals. Whether one bites differs between the states read for this record; the table on this page gives each answer separately.
What is a notice of intent to preserve mineral rights?
It is the filing a mineral owner makes, in states whose statutes provide for one, to stop a dormancy or title-cure clock and keep an unused interest alive. Recording it is evidence that the interest is not abandoned. Whether there is anything for you to file is the question, and it has two ways of coming out as no: the state may have no such statute at all, in which case there is no clock and nothing to record, or it may have a marketable record title act with a notice-of-claim mechanism that minerals are expressly excepted from, in which case the mechanism exists but a severed mineral owner does not need it. Both shapes are on this record, and so is a third that catches people out. A marketable record title act which simply never mentions minerals does not exempt them: it clears the title of everything its own exceptions do not save, and an interest older than the root of title goes with the rest unless a notice was filed. Florida is that shape, and it is the case where filing matters most and is least likely to be suggested to you, because nothing in the statute is addressed to mineral owners at all. So if you have been told to file one, the thing to establish first is whether your state has a statute that would make the filing mean anything, and the rules on this page give that answer for the states that have been read.
Can I get my mineral rights back if someone else owns them now?
Not by waiting, and not by pointing out that the owner has never used them. If the minerals were severed from your surface by a deed or a reservation, they belong to whoever holds that interest today, and in a state with no dormant mineral act there is no mechanism by which their inactivity returns the interest to you. The realistic routes are buying the interest from its owner, or a claim founded on something in the chain of title itself, which is a question for a title examiner reading your instruments. This site publishes the law and the place to look, never a conclusion about a particular tract.
Does possessing the surface for long enough give me the minerals?
No, once the estate has been severed. Colorado has been read on this point and the rule is that possession of the surface is not possession of the minerals: an adverse claimant has to possess the mineral estate itself, which in practice means actually producing from it, not farming or fencing the ground above it. That is the single most common misunderstanding about losing and gaining severed minerals, and it is why decades of undisturbed surface use do not accumulate into a mineral claim. The companion rule, that non use alone does not forfeit an interest, is published here at partial confidence with its caveat stated.
Sources read
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- Code of Alabama, Alabama Legislature Alabama Code § 40-20-36 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Alabama, Alabama Legislature Alabama Code § 40-10-1 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Alabama, Alabama Legislature Alabama Code § 6-2-33 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Alabama, Alabama Legislature Alabama Code § 6-2-32 read July 31, 2026
- Alaska Statutes 2025, Alaska State Legislature AS 38.05.255 read July 31, 2026
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- FindLaw Codes, Arkansas Code 18-11-105 Ark. Code Ann. § 18-11-105(d)(1) read August 4, 2026
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- California Civil Code, California Legislative Information Cal. Civ. Code § 883.220 read July 31, 2026
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- California Civil Code, California Legislative Information Cal. Civ. Code § 883.260 read July 31, 2026
- California Civil Code, California Legislative Information Cal. Civ. Code § 883.250 read July 31, 2026
- California Civil Code, California Legislative Information Cal. Civ. Code § 883.230 read July 31, 2026
- California Civil Code, California Legislative Information Cal. Civ. Code § 883.120 read July 31, 2026
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- FindLaw Caselaw Kriss v. Mineral Rights, Inc., 911 P.2d 711, 714 (Colo. App. 1996), quoted in Beaver Creek Ranch v. Gordman Leverich LLLP, No. 08CA1333 (Colo. App. May 28, 2009) read July 25, 2026
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- C.G.S. § 52-575, Entry upon land to be made within fifteen years read August 3, 2026
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- Idaho Code s. 5-210, Oral claim, possession defined, payment of taxes read August 3, 2026
- Idaho Code s. 5-203, Action to recover realty read August 3, 2026
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- Iowa Code s. 458A.20, Tax sale, redemption by owner read August 1, 2026
- Kansas Statutes Annotated, Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes K.S.A. § 55-1602 read July 31, 2026
- Kansas Statutes Annotated, Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes K.S.A. § 55-1603 read July 31, 2026
- Kansas Statutes Annotated, Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes K.S.A. § 55-1604 read July 31, 2026
- Kansas Statutes Annotated, Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes K.S.A. § 55-1605 read July 31, 2026
- Kansas Statutes Annotated, Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes K.S.A. § 55-1606 read July 31, 2026
- Kentucky Revised Statutes, Kentucky General Assembly Ky. Rev. Stat. § 353.470 read July 31, 2026
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- Louisiana Revised Statutes, Louisiana State Legislature La. Rev. Stat. § 31:28 read July 31, 2026
- Louisiana Revised Statutes, Louisiana State Legislature La. Rev. Stat. § 31:29 read July 31, 2026
- Louisiana Revised Statutes, Louisiana State Legislature La. Rev. Stat. § 31:36 read July 31, 2026
- Louisiana Revised Statutes, Louisiana State Legislature La. Rev. Stat. § 31:85 read July 31, 2026
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- 14 M.R.S. s. 810-A, Mistake of boundary line read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1203, Action to terminate dormant mineral interest read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1201, Definitions read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1202, Scope and purpose read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Tax-Property s. 8-229, Separate assessment of minerals read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1205, Late notice of intent to preserve read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1204, Notice of intent to preserve read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1206, Trust for unknown or missing owner read August 3, 2026
- Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings s. 5-103, Actions for possession of land read August 3, 2026
- MGL c. 185 § 45, Judgment of confirmation and registration; opening of judgment; remedies of aggrieved persons read August 3, 2026
- MGL c. 185 § 46, Encumbrances affecting certificates of title read August 3, 2026
- MGL c. 185, The Land Court and Registration of Title to Land, all 125 sections read August 3, 2026
- MGL c. 184 § 23, Conditions or restrictions; term of years; applicability read August 3, 2026
- MGL c. 184 § 26, Land use or construction restrictions read August 3, 2026
- Massachusetts General Laws, part index, enumerated to chapter level read August 3, 2026
- MGL c. 185 § 53, Prescription, adverse possession or right of way by necessity read August 3, 2026
- MGL c. 260 § 21, Recovery of land read August 3, 2026
- Michigan Compiled Laws, Michigan Legislature MCL 554.291(2) read July 30, 2026
- Michigan Compiled Laws, Michigan Legislature MCL 554.292(1) read July 30, 2026
- Minnesota Statutes, Office of the Revisor of Statutes Minn. Stat. § 93.52 read August 1, 2026
- Minnesota Statutes, Office of the Revisor of Statutes Minn. Stat. § 93.55 read August 1, 2026
- Minnesota Statutes, Office of the Revisor of Statutes Minn. Stat. § 93.551 read August 1, 2026
- FindLaw Codes, Mississippi Code 15-1-13 Miss. Code Ann. § 15-1-13(1), with §§ 89-1-1 to 89-1-89, 89-5-1 to 89-5-113 and 89-12-1 to 89-12-59 read end to end read August 4, 2026
- Revised Statutes of Missouri, chapter index read August 3, 2026
- RSMo ch. 442, Titles and Conveyance of Real Estate read August 3, 2026
- RSMo s. 442.400, Not valid until recorded read August 3, 2026
- RSMo s. 516.010, Actions for recovery of lands commenced, when read August 3, 2026
- Montana Code Annotated, table of contents and section indexes read July 30, 2026
- Montana Code Annotated, Title 82 chapter 1 part 3, Trusts for Unlocatable Mineral Owners Mont. Code Ann. tit. 82, ch. 1, pt. 3 read July 30, 2026
- Nebraska Revised Statutes, Nebraska Legislature Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-229 read July 31, 2026
- Nebraska Revised Statutes, Nebraska Legislature Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-228 read July 31, 2026
- Nebraska Revised Statutes, Nebraska Legislature Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-230 read July 31, 2026
- Nebraska Revised Statutes, Nebraska Legislature Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-231 read July 31, 2026
- NRS ch. 111, Estates in Property and Conveyancing, read in full read August 1, 2026
- NRS ch. 517, Mining Claims, Mill Sites and Tunnel Rights, read in full read August 1, 2026
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- RSA 508:2, Real Actions read August 3, 2026
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- N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.1, Certain ancient mineral claims extinguished in certain counties read August 2, 2026
- N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 47B-3, Exceptions read August 2, 2026
- North Carolina General Statutes, table of chapters, enumerated for the negative read August 2, 2026
- North Dakota Century Code, North Dakota Legislative Branch N.D.C.C. § 38-18.1-02 read July 30, 2026
- Ohio Revised Code, Ohio Legislative Service Commission R.C. 5301.56(B) read July 30, 2026
- Ohio Revised Code, Ohio Legislative Service Commission R.C. 5301.53(E) read July 30, 2026
- Supreme Court of Ohio Corban v. Chesapeake Exploration, L.L.C., 149 Ohio St.3d 512, 2016-Ohio-5796, ¶ 31 (No. 2014-0804, decided September 15, 2016) read July 30, 2026
- Oklahoma Statutes, Oklahoma State Legislature 16 O.S. § 71 read July 30, 2026
- ORS s. 517.170, Policy read August 2, 2026
- ORS s. 105.620, Acquiring title by adverse possession read August 2, 2026
- Pennsylvania General Assembly, unconsolidated statutes Dormant Oil and Gas Act, Act of Jul. 11, 2006, P.L. 1134, No. 115, § 2 read July 30, 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-13.1-4, Prior interest void read August 3, 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-13.1-2, Chain of title for not less than forty years read August 3, 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-13.1-7, Excepted interests read August 3, 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-13.1-9, Notice not to be recorded to slander title damages read August 3, 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-7-1, Conclusive title by peaceful possession under claim of title read August 3, 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-7-6, Notice of intent to dispute interrupting adverse possession read August 3, 2026
- R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-7-7, Action by claimant in possession after notice of intent to dispute read August 3, 2026
- S.C. Code of Laws, table of contents read August 3, 2026
- S.C. Code title 27, Property and Conveyances, chapter list read August 3, 2026
- S.C. Code title 48, Environmental Protection and Conservation, chapter list read August 3, 2026
- S.C. Code s. 15-67-210, Presumption of possession read August 3, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-2, Abandonment by nonuse--Title vests in surface owner read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-3, Acts constituting use of interest read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-1, "Mineral interest" defined read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-7, Waiver of provisions read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-9, Prospective and retrospective application read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-6, Notice by surface owner--Contents--Proof of publication and mailing read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-5, Circumstances in which failure to record statement does not cause abandonment read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30A-4, Statement of claim--Recording--Contents--Effect read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30B-6, Actions not use of mineral interest under chapter 43-30A read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30B-3, Declaration of trust in favor of unlocated or unidentified mineral owner--Appointment of trustee read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30B-4, Administration of trust read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30B-5, Termination of trust--Distribution of trust moneys read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30-3, Marketable record title held free and clear of interest, claims, and charges--Limitation--Notice of claim of interest read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30-1, Marketable record title--Unbroken chain of title of record for twenty-two years or longer--Exceptions read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30-7, Affidavit of possession of real property--Contents--Recording--Time for filing read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30-11, Claims barred by chapter--Definition read August 4, 2026
- SDCL 43-30-12, Exceptions to application of chapter read August 4, 2026
- FindLaw Codes, Tennessee Code 66-5-108 T.C.A. § 66-5-108(c) and (b)(3) read August 4, 2026
- FindLaw Codes, Tennessee Code 67-5-809 T.C.A. § 67-5-809(d), with § 67-5-804(b) read August 4, 2026
- Texas Constitution and Statutes, search of all codes for the word dormant read July 30, 2026
- Texas Constitution and Statutes, Texas Legislative Council Tex. Prop. Code ch. 76 read July 30, 2026
- Utah Code, Utah State Legislature Utah Code § 57-9-6 read July 31, 2026
- Utah Code, Utah State Legislature Utah Code § 57-9-3 read July 31, 2026
- Utah Code, Utah State Legislature Utah Code § 57-9-1 read July 31, 2026
- Utah Code, Utah State Legislature Utah Code § 40-6-2 read July 31, 2026
- 29 V.S.A. § 563, Abandonment of oil and gas interests; preservation read August 3, 2026
- 29 V.S.A. ch. 14, Natural Gas and Oil Conservation, table of contents read August 3, 2026
- 27 V.S.A. § 601, Marketable record title: requirements read August 3, 2026
- 27 V.S.A. § 603, Successors in interest; notices of claim; filing for record read August 3, 2026
- 27 V.S.A. § 604, Failure to file notice read August 3, 2026
- 27 V.S.A. § 605, Contents of notice of claim; recording read August 3, 2026
- 12 V.S.A. § 501, Recovery of lands read August 3, 2026
- 12 V.S.A. § 502, Entry into houses or lands read August 3, 2026
- Code of Virginia, Virginia General Assembly Va. Code § 45.2-400 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Virginia, Virginia General Assembly Va. Code § 45.2-401 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Virginia, Virginia General Assembly Va. Code § 45.2-602 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Virginia, Virginia General Assembly Va. Code § 45.2-604 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Virginia, Virginia General Assembly Va. Code § 45.2-605 read July 31, 2026
- Code of Virginia, Virginia General Assembly Va. Code § 45.2-607 read July 31, 2026
- RCW 78.22.010, Extinguishment of unused mineral rights authorized read August 1, 2026
- RCW 78.22.020, "Mineral interest" defined read August 1, 2026
- RCW 78.22.030, Acts constituting use of mineral interest read August 1, 2026
- RCW 78.22.050, Extinguishment of mineral interest, procedure read August 1, 2026
- RCW 78.22.060, Presumption of extinguishment, conditions, statement of claim read August 1, 2026
- RCW 78.22.070, Statement of claim, notice and affidavit of publication, auditor's duties read August 1, 2026
- RCW 78.22.080, Exemptions from claim of abandonment and extinguishment read August 1, 2026
- RCW 78.22.090, Waiver prohibited read August 1, 2026
- West Virginia Code, chapter and article indexes read July 31, 2026
- West Virginia Code, West Virginia Legislature W. Va. Code § 37B-1-4 read July 31, 2026
- Wis. Stat. s. 706.057, Lapse and reversion of interests in minerals read August 1, 2026
- Wis. Stat. s. 706.01, definitions, including (5), (7m) and (8m) read August 1, 2026
- Wyoming Statutes, Wyoming Legislature Wyo. Stat. § 30-5-101 et seq. read July 31, 2026
- Wyoming Statutes, Wyoming Legislature Wyo. Stat. § 34-27-101 read July 31, 2026