Most people assume real estate is forever. If your great-grandfather bought a farm, paid his taxes, and handed down the deed, that dirt belongs to your family until someone decides to sell it. Down here in Texas, we treat mineral rights the same way. A mineral deed from 1920 is just as valid today, even if nobody has stepped foot on the land or drilled a well in a century.

Michigan plays by a completely different set of rules.

If you own oil and gas rights in the Michigan Basin, you are holding a silent asset with an expiration fuse. A family can inherit a beautiful fractional mineral interest, proudly assume they still own it, and then discover years later that the asset simply vanished. The state gave it back to the surface owner. The surface owner did not have to buy it. They did not even have to tell the family they were taking it.

This happens because of a highly specific, somewhat ruthless piece of legislation called the Dormant Minerals Act. We talk to families all the time who fall into this trap. Let’s walk through how this law actually works and what you need to do to protect your ownership.

The Problem with Sleeping Minerals

To understand the trap, we need to look at how Michigan handles :severed mineral rights. When a landowner sells the surface of their property but keeps the oil and gas rights, those two estates are severed. They can be bought, sold, and inherited completely independently of each other.

In the middle of the 20th century, Michigan faced a massive title problem. Decades of fractional inheritance had scattered oil and gas ownership across thousands of distant heirs. Energy companies wanted to drill, but they could not track down the great-grandchildren of the original owners to sign leases.

The legislature decided to clean up the county deed records with a blunt instrument. They passed Act 42 of 1963, officially known as the Termination of Oil or Gas Interests in Land act.

The premise of the law is simple. If you sever your oil and gas rights from the surface dirt, you are put on a twenty-year timer. If twenty years pass without any recognized legal or commercial activity on that exact property, your ownership is extinguished. The oil and gas rights automatically merge back with the surface estate.

You lose the asset entirely.

This is especially dangerous for families holding older, non-producing interests. Maybe your family had leased acreage in the Antrim Shale during the big natural gas boom of the 1990s. Or maybe they had a producing well in the Niagaran Reef trend back in the 1980s. When the wells eventually depleted and the operator plugged the holes, the royalty checks stopped arriving in the mail.

Most owners assume a stopped check just means the minerals are dormant, waiting for the next technology boom or the next wildcatter. They put the old lease paperwork in a filing cabinet and forget about it. What they do not realize is that the day the well stopped producing, the twenty-year clock started ticking again.

How the Clock Ticks (and How to Stop It)

Michigan does give you ways to keep your property. The 20-year rule is paused or reset by specific actions called a :savings event.

According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) mineral rights guidelines, severed oil and gas rights revert to the surface owner unless at least one of the following five actions occurs within the 20-year window:

  1. A drilling permit is issued.
  2. Oil or gas is actually produced or withdrawn from the property.
  3. The interest is used for underground gas storage operations.
  4. The severed interest is sold, leased, mortgaged, or transferred by a recorded instrument.
  5. A specific written notice is filed with the county Register of Deeds.

Let’s break down how these actually play out in real life.

The first two are straightforward. If an operator pulls a permit to drill, or if a pumpjack is pulling oil out of the ground, your rights are safe. The commercial activity proves the asset is not abandoned.

The third exception is uniquely relevant to this state. Michigan holds a massive amount of underground natural gas. During periods of low demand, companies pump gas into depleted geological formations, storing it there until winter when heating demand spikes. According to the Michigan Bar’s Environmental Law Deskbook, the state has approximately 623 billion cubic feet of :working gas storage capacity across 55 different fields. If your family’s old depleted well happens to sit inside a unit that was converted into an active storage field, your rights might be preserved.

The final two exceptions are where families get themselves into the most trouble.

The Inheritance Illusion

A massive amount of Michigan mineral wealth is lost during generational transitions.

When an owner passes away, the family goes through probate. The executor distributes the assets according to the will. The heirs receive their fractional shares of the oil and gas rights. They assume that because a judge signed a probate order, the state knows they are the new owners.

That is entirely incorrect.

The twenty-year clock is governed by the specific county Register of Deeds where the actual dirt is located. If your father dies in Oakland County, but the minerals are up in Otsego County, the Otsego County clerk has no idea what happened in probate court. Unless someone physically takes the probate deed and records it in the Otsego County property records, the transfer essentially does not exist for the purpose of the 20-year rule.

We see this frequently when helping families navigate the aftermath of inheriting mineral rights. They have a box full of wills and old leases, but nothing has been recorded in the actual target county for thirty years. By the time they figure out what they own, the asset has already reverted to the surface owner.

The Paperwork Rescue: Filing a Claim of Interest

If your minerals are not leased, not producing, and not being sold, you have one primary defense mechanism. You must file a written notice with the county Register of Deeds.

This document is usually called a Claim of Interest. It is a sworn statement recorded against the legal description of the property declaring that you still claim ownership of the severed oil and gas rights.

Filing this piece of paper resets the 20-year clock.

The process requires you to know the exact legal description of the property (Township, Range, Section, and fractional calls). You have to draft the claim, sign it in front of a notary, mail it to the correct county clerk, and pay the recording fee. It is a minor administrative headache, but it is the only way to protect a non-producing, unleased Michigan mineral interest from disappearing.

The hardest part is remembering to do it. You have to create a system to ensure that you, or your children, will remember to file another claim of interest before the next twenty years expire.

The Surface Owner’s Advantage

You might wonder how a surface owner actually claims the minerals when the clock runs out. The reality is that the burden is entirely on the mineral owner to prove they kept the asset alive.

If twenty years pass with no recorded activity, the surface owner can simply assume the oil and gas rights are theirs. If an energy company comes along wanting to drill, the landman will check the deed records. If the landman sees a severed mineral interest from 1985 with zero leases, sales, or claims filed since then, they will flag it. They will conclude the minerals reverted under Act 42 of 1963. The energy company will then sign a lease directly with the surface owner and completely bypass the original mineral family.

The surface owner never has to send you a warning letter. They do not have to file a lawsuit to take the property. The law operates automatically in the background.

There are quiet title lawsuits when facts are disputed. Sometimes a family will argue that a very vague recording did constitute a transfer, or that a pooling order secretly held the acreage. But fighting a Dormant Minerals Act case in court is notoriously expensive and difficult. It is far better to never let the clock get close to zero.

Making a Strategic Decision

Managing Michigan minerals requires vigilance. You cannot just lock the deed in a safe and ignore it. You have to actively monitor the county records, track the timeline of your last savings event, and ensure your heirs understand the paperwork required to keep the asset alive.

For some families, this maintenance is perfectly fine. They understand the asset, they know the legal descriptions, and they are comfortable managing the filings.

For others, the maintenance becomes an unwanted burden. They look at scattered family acreage across three different counties. They realize the checks stopped decades ago. They look at the legal fees to update the title, clear up old probates, and file the appropriate claims of interest. They start asking themselves what the real endgame is for holding onto an asset that requires constant monitoring to avoid confiscation.

This is where having clear facts matters. Before you can decide whether to maintain an asset, ignore it, or sell it, you need to know exactly what it is worth.

We talk to families every week who are trying to make sense of inherited assets. We run the geology, look at the production history, and calculate the math. Sometimes we tell people their acreage sits in a highly prospective area and they absolutely need to spend the money to file their claims of interest and hold on.

Other times, the math points a different way. If the acreage is outside of the core development zones and the family is facing thousands of dollars in legal fees just to fix the title and record the claims, selling the rights to a family office can be a clean exit. Should I Sell My Mineral Rights? is a question without a single right answer. It always depends on the specific family and the specific dirt.

But you cannot make that decision in the dark.

If you own non-producing oil and gas rights in Michigan, your immediate takeaway should be clear. Pull your deeds. Find the last time a document with your family’s name was recorded in the county where the land sits. Do the math on the twenty-year window.

If you are getting close to the deadline, you have options. You can hire a local attorney to draft and record a claim of interest. Or, you can reach out to understand how we value royalties and see if liquidating the asset makes more sense for your family’s financial future.

Whatever you decide, do not let the clock run out simply because you did not know it was ticking. It is always better to know your options while you still have them.

:severed-mineral-rights

When a landowner sells the surface dirt of a property but legally retains the ownership of the oil, gas, and other minerals beneath it. The property is split into two distinct legal estates that can be bought, sold, or inherited separately.

:savings-event

A specific legal or commercial action required by law to stop a dormant mineral interest from expiring. In Michigan, this includes drilling, producing, storing gas, recording a deed transfer, or filing a formal claim of interest at the county courthouse.

:working-gas-storage

The volume of natural gas pumped into underground geological formations (like depleted oil wells or salt caverns) that can be actively withdrawn to meet market demand. Michigan uses these formations heavily to store gas for winter heating.