The Case of the Laughing Heirs
The Secret Child
Welcome to 'Splitting Heirs'
To Give or Not to Give: Considerations for Year-End Gifting
“He who comes for the inheritance is often made to pay for the funeral”.* When heirs inherit property together and can’t agree on its use, Texas courts strongly prefer dividing the land physically rather than forcing a sale,...more
Let’s assume you own a 160-acre farm in Washington County. Your father purchased the farm in 1992 from a local farmer named Jones. (the “1992 Deed”). At the time your father purchased the farm, there was an oil and gas lease...more
Let’s assume your grandfather owned 99 acres in Washington County. In 1955, he sells a small portion of the farm to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in order to facilitate the construction of new State Route 39. This acreage...more
The calculation of production royalties and the deduction of post-production costs remains a controversial topic here in Pennsylvania. As we have written before, there is another frustrating and often confusing...more
As drilling activity and production in the Appalachian region stabilized (and even began to move upward) at the end of 2020, class actions continue to be used in creative ways by plaintiffs raising a variety of claims and...more
In Susan Davis Van Dyke et al. v. The Navigator Group. et al., the Eastland court of appeals applied recent fixed-versus-floating NPRI principles to a double-fraction mineral interest reservation....more
Estate of Trickett was a dispute over heirship of Claralyn Trickett, possibly the wife of Robert Bowerman (who must have forgotten to divorce his previous wife)....more