Montana oil and mining journal. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1931-1953, 1936-03-07

15-barrel wells the title would perhaps
have never been questioned. Former own
ers of the land would never have
thought of it. But when q thousand
barrel well came in, IL became worth
while for lawyers to dig into the title,
reading over every written word, TO find
some flaw or IoOphOIe- The safe way,
of course. Is to examine titIe in just that
manner BEFORE the oil land becomes
highly valuable.
Title work belongs to SPECIALISTS.
Not every attorney is capable of reading
and interpreting an oil-land abstract, I'm
our opinion. IL follows that no layman
can any more think Of doing his own title
work than he can expect 70 fix his own
watch or remove his own appendix. He
must, therefore, entrust this work to
people who have had years experience TN
OfI-Iand titles. The man living in Ne
braska, a state which has no OH land
practice ordinarily could not safely re-
fer a title to his hometown attorney.
The most sorry messes in title we have
encountered have come from back east
attorneys who do not understand ole
land law.
IN view Of the careIessness of the av-
erage person In this very, very im-
pOrtant matter IL is surprising that
there is not more bad-titIe royalty floating
around. For the most part, there has been
little of this sort OF thing in Montana,
largely due to the high integrity of the
brokers. We OF this organization
dumped our nOses'' in the early days
and as the burned child shuns the fire,
we have been super-cautiOus since that
time. We learned our lesson when
''prominent'' business man OF Great Falls,
a member of the school board and
member of the fair board, sold us ''land-
owners royalty. The assignment he gave
us was correct. But we now know that
he knew that he owned overriding roy
atty. At the moment he sold it to us,
the lease as being cancelled, wiping out
his overriding royalty and with IL our
title. So we learned that we can't trust
anyone, no matter how piOus; we must
look to the records.
There is one rule for the Iayman. He
can always determine whether he has
RECEIVED landowners royalty or over
riding royalty. We know the landowners
form as either Form 55 or Form So
The overriding form is No. 81.
The landowners form provides that the
royalty is subject TO the existing lease
and any lease or leases that may subse-
quentIy be given.
The overriding form provides that the
royalty is subject to the lease NOW COW
ering said lands.
That wording is something that must
be carefully watched. AS stated i'm a
previous article, we avoid overriding
royalties, as q rule. Whenever we have
handled them, we change the form OF
the assignment so that it plainly says
overriding royalty. The royalty forms
used In Montana have repeatedly gone
up against the blaze Of the supreme court,
so there is no question about their
legality.
Members of this organization need not
worry about titles. That is service
which we try to perform a little better
than the average individual investor could
afford to do. 1t is of the advan-
tages of membership I'm Landowners
Royalties company. Where we buy so
rOaIty, it Is divided up among five or
ten or possibly 20 persons. We spare
no expense i'm examination OF title, for
when ft Is divided among five, ten or 20
persons it costs none very much, yet
one person buying one per cent could not
afford to foot the title bill, alone.
A second basic rule for the individual
is: BEWARE OF MONTANA TAX
TITLES. We have come to the point
that we doubt that ANY Montana tax title