The assignment
Where examination starts
An email arrives: "We're drilling in Section 14. Find out who owns the minerals."
That's it. That's the job. Somebody is about to spend millions on a well, and before they do, they need to know (with documents, not vibes) who has the power to lease, who must be paid, and what fraction belongs to whom. Everything you've learned is about to get used at once:
The examiner's mindset, in one sentence: be a pessimist with a filing system. Assume every instrument might be the one that breaks the chain, write down everything, and let the documents (not the family's recollection, not the lease broker's spreadsheet) tell the story.
The spine of the work
Building the chain of title
A chain of title is the unbroken sequence of recorded instruments connecting the very first owner to whoever owns the land today. The first owner is the sovereign (the government) and the first link is the patent, the instrument by which public land first became private.
The linking rule is beautifully simple: the grantee of one instrument must be the grantor of the next. Where that handshake fails (a deed out of someone who never took title in, an estate that never got probated) the chain is broken, and everything after the break is suspect.
Note that "instruments" means more than deeds. Wills, probate orders, divorce decrees, foreclosures, tax sales, corporate mergers: anything that can move title belongs in the chain. Death moves more mineral interests than deeds do.
"A chain of title is a genealogy where the documents are the family."
Where the records live
The abstract & the courthouse
Topic 02 told you why the county records are authoritative: constructive notice. Now the practical question: how do you actually find every instrument touching Section 14 among millions of filed documents? Two index systems:
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 handshake at a time.
Some counties (and most commercial title plants) index every instrument against the legal description. One lookup shows everything ever filed against Section 14: vastly faster, where it exists.
Out of that search comes the examiner's raw material, usually an abstract of title: a compiled, chronological set of copies of every instrument affecting the tract. Sometimes a professional abstractor builds it; increasingly, you build your own from county-clerk scans and online indexes.
A chronological compilation of all recorded instruments affecting a particular tract, assembled so an examiner can review the entire record history in one sitting. The abstract is the evidence; the title opinion is the verdict.
Online records have limits. Many counties' digital indexes only go back a few decades: the older records still live in bound volumes at the courthouse. A "complete" online search that starts in 1985 isn't a complete search.
Write everything down
Building a runsheet
As you work through the records, you log every instrument in a runsheet: the examiner's chronological ledger of the chain. Date, parties, instrument type, recording reference, and most importantly: what it did to the ownership.
| Filed | Instrument | From → To | Rec. | Effect on minerals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1902 | Patent | USA → J. Hargrove | Pat. 1102 | All of Sec. 14 into private hands |
| 1948 | Warranty Deed | Hargrove → Ada Carter | Vol 89/214 | Fee simple, no reservations |
| 1963 | Mineral Deed | Ada → Ben Carter | Vol 142/33 | 1/2 minerals severed to Ben |
| 1971 | (gap) | Ada Carter (deceased) | none found | Ada's 1/2: no probate of record |
| 2019 | OGL | Ben → Apex Energy | Doc 2019-0457 | Ben's 1/2 leased, 3/16 royalty |
The runsheet is where Topic 04's math happens, too: each conveyance's fraction gets tracked so that at the bottom of the sheet you can total every owner's interest and check it sums to exactly 1.000000. If it doesn't, something's wrong in the chain, not in arithmetic.
- Log instruments you think don't matter. The "irrelevant" easement sometimes turns out to be the document that explains the gap.
- Note what you searched, not just what you found: which indexes, which date ranges. Your search scope is part of your work product.
When the chain breaks
Common defects & curative
Almost no chain comes out clean. The recurring problems, and the standard fixes collectively called curative work:
State law decides the details: what an heirship affidavit proves, how long an old lien survives, what marketable-title or dormant-mineral statutes clean up automatically. The defect/cure pattern is universal; the tools' exact strength varies.
The work product
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 exactly what must be done before the owner list can be fully trusted.
A requirement has a rhythm: state what the record shows, say why it's a problem, and demand a specific fix:
Operators read the requirements and put landmen to work gathering the cures, and a division order title opinion later turns the cured ownership into the payment decimals from Topic 04. The loop closes: estates → deeds → leases → math → examination → back to the records, cleaner than you found them.
That's the whole craft. The rest is reps.
Test yourself
Quick gut-check
Last three of the course. Tap to check yourself.