inherited oil/gas trust

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? VA via NM

I am working w/a 42 year old woman w/a ninth grade education. She cleans houses. Recently she shared w/me that she has a trust fund in Virginia w/no understanding of how to access it.

it is a long sordid story and for which she produced documentation and i am inclined to want to help her. Due to a really evil family situation her mother was disowned, but a grandfather left the grandchildren in his will, she is the last grandchild the grandfather knew about.

she has a letter from a lawyer here in NM stating that she does have a trust fund in Virginia and that she might try contacting a lawyer to find out about the 'title' to the land the oil/gas was being extracted from. We have tried to contact this guy and he has not responded, not phones, not letters, not emails.

the family in virginia is evidently well known and are in some kind of litigation right now. she is not interested in becoming a litigant, the money in the fund will more then make her comfortable.

my thoughts are she needs to get a copy of the original will (lost in the family mess) and track down (as inexpensively as possible) the title to this land. She was told the title would annotate what her percentage of the royalties would be.

any words of wisdom out there? i know there are some great brains reading this. she doesn't own a computer and even tho she is sitting beside me now, she has no clue as to what or how i am doing on here.

thanks in advance.

Call the county courthouse to find title to the property. Also, find out if Trust has been recorded.

She needs to contact the personal representative of the estate. Does she know anyone in her family?

thank you

No, she is basically totally alienated from the whole mom's side of the family.

Mom married a minority, hence the estrangement.

I am trying to help her track things down from scratch. the paperwork is all from the oil company that is responsible for official notification of legal changes.

how do i find out if the Trust has been recorded?

but every suggestiong/bit of direction we get will be followed up on.

You asked, "how do i find out if the Trust has been recorded?"

Call the courthouse and ask.

Some county courthouses probate clerk offices record trusts if they are required to by law, and then others do not. While you are talking to the probate court, inquire to see if a probate was done on the grandfather (you need to know the date of death, his name, and the city where he died).

A look at the probate file will be informative (if you can't visit the courthouse in person you may want to order a copy of the file by mail), but the only problem is that if the royalties were in a trust, the trust is a private document that is not usually publicly available and can only be requested by your contacting the trustee. If you are lucky the information about the royalties may be in the probate file, but it is a possibility that the information might not be there.

What you can do right now is to call the oil company to see if any of the royalty checks have been issued in your friend's name and they might also tell you the names of the other family members who also have a royalty interest. They can tell your friend what she needs to do if she needs to provide documentation of her identity or a birth certificate to prove how she is related to the family and they may even tell you where the checks are being sent/mailed to and who the trustee is.

What a great friend you are to assist this lady in getting what is rightfully hers!!

DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])

MOST Helpful!

Thanks guys! i didn't mean to sound like a dimwit, i just didn't know, exactly, what to ask about.

Mr. Dandy Don, your response was MOST helpful and we will follow through on that line of 'call the company'.

She has recieved royalty checks and she hasn't cashed them, ever, for 21 years. She has no explanation as to why other then she was clueless as to where they were coming from of why.

Her mother refuses to talk about her past.

I'm not really all that nice, i just got all in a dander when she told me that a couple of people had offered their help based on her a) splitting 50/50 whatever she got or, in at least one instance the person offered to 'take it off her hands', wanting her to sign everything over to them because 'she was used to not having any money and wouldn't miss it....'

i mean, come on, wouldn't that piss most people with any ethical backbone off?

If you don't want to order a copy of the entire probate file (if you think it may be massive, maybe you can ask the clerk how many pages are in it), then just order a copy of the will and any page showing name and address of the executor and of the heirs. In most cases, the executor is also the trustee and your friend's attorney needs to write a letter (on your friend's behalf), sent by certified mail, to the trustee to request a copy of the trust and an accounting statement. But first your friend will need to consult the trust attorney to find out if she has the right to request this information--some states allow it and other states don't.

Your friend's attorney can also find out more specific details on how to contact the Virginia attorney who sent her the letter about the trust fund.

After you tell the oil company that your friend has kept so many uncashed checks (that are now outdated and which she will be unable to cash at the bank), hopefully they will let her send them the uncashed checks so that they can reissue new checks.

DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])