01
Where examination starts
A request comes in: "We're drilling in Section 14. Find out who owns the minerals."
Before an operator spends millions on a well, it needs to know who can lease, who must be paid, and in what fractions. The examiner answers from the documents. Each earlier topic feeds into the work:
Log every instrument, and rely on the recorded documents rather than family memory or a lease broker's spreadsheet.
02
Building the chain of title
A chain of title is the unbroken sequence of instruments connecting the first owner of the land to whoever owns it today. The first owner is the sovereign (the government). In the public-land states the first link is usually a patent from the United States, the instrument by which public land became private. Elsewhere it is the original grant from the state or an earlier sovereign. Examiners trace back to that first grant, then run the chain forward.
Section 14 is 640 acres, and it may hold several tracts with separate chains. The example below follows one of them, the NE/4 (160 acres).
To practice putting a chain together, try the chain of title interactive.
The grantee of one instrument must be the grantor of the next. Where that fails (a deed from someone who never took title, an estate that was never probated) the chain is broken, and everything after the break is suspect.
"Instruments" means more than deeds. Wills, probate orders, divorce decrees, foreclosures, tax sales, and corporate mergers can all move title, and all belong in the chain. Deaths move many mineral interests, and often leave no deed behind.
03
The abstract & the courthouse
Topic 02 covered why the county records matter: recording gives constructive notice. The practical question is how to find every instrument touching the tract among millions of recorded documents. Counties use two kinds of index:
Most counties index by party name. You run each owner's name through the grantee index (how they got it), then the grantor index (what they did with it), building the chain one link at a time.
Some counties (and most commercial title plants) index every instrument against the legal description. One lookup shows everything recorded against Section 14. It is faster, where available.
The search produces the examiner's raw material, often an abstract of title: a compiled, chronological set of summaries (and often copies) of the recorded instruments affecting the tract, usually certified by the abstractor to a stated date. Sometimes a professional abstractor builds it. Increasingly, examiners build their own from county scans and online indexes.
A chronological compilation of the recorded instruments affecting a tract, usually summarized and certified by an abstractor to a stated date, so an examiner can review the record history in one place.
The county real property records are the core of the search, but they are not a complete history. Probate files, court cases, production records, and state or federal agency records live elsewhere, and an examiner may need them too.
Online records have limits. Many counties' digital indexes go back only a few decades, and older records are still in bound volumes at the courthouse. An online search that starts in 1985 is not a complete search.
04
Building a runsheet
As you work through the records, you log every instrument in a runsheet: the examiner's chronological ledger of the chain. Each entry records the date, parties, instrument type, recording reference, and what the instrument did to ownership.
| Filed | Instrument | From → To | Rec. | Effect on minerals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1902 | Patent | USA → J. Hargrove | Pat. 1102 | NE/4 of Sec. 14 into private hands |
| 1948 | Warranty Deed | Hargrove → Edna Pruitt | Vol 89/214 | Fee simple, no reservations |
| 1963 | Mineral Deed | Edna → Roy Pruitt | Vol 142/33 | 1/2 minerals severed to Roy |
| 1971 | (gap) | Edna Pruitt (deceased) | none found | Edna's 1/2: no probate of record |
| 2019 | OGL | Roy → Apex Energy | Doc 2019-0457 | Roy's 1/2 leased, 3/16 royalty |
The runsheet is also where the math from Topic 04 happens. Each conveyance's fraction is tracked so that at the bottom of the sheet every owner's interest can be totaled. The total must be exactly 1.000000. If it isn't, find out why before going further. Usually a fraction was misread or a conveyance was missed.
- Log instruments you think don't matter. An easement or affidavit that looks irrelevant can explain a gap later.
- Note what you searched as well as what you found: which indexes and which date ranges. The scope of the search is part of the work product.
05
Common defects & curative
Most chains have defects. The fixes are collectively called curative work. The common problems and the usual cures:
What each cure accomplishes varies by state: what an heirship affidavit proves, how long an old lien survives, and what marketable title or dormant mineral statutes clear automatically.
06
Writing requirements & opinions
The examination ends in a title opinion: a formal letter stating who owns what (the ownership tables your runsheet math produced), followed by requirements, numbered instructions listing what must be done before the ownership can be relied on.
A requirement states what the record shows, why it is a defect, and what will cure it:
The operator's landmen work the requirements and gather the cures. Later, a division order title opinion turns the cured ownership into the payment decimals from Topic 04. The well timeline shows where the drilling and division order opinions fall in the life of a well.
07
Review questions
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