Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Mineral rights transfer

You should have an attorney draft such an agreement. There may be case specific and unforeseen issues.

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Re: Mineral rights transfer

Mineral rights are a part of the fee and can be transferred by deed, just as other fractional parts of a fee simple absolute in real property, such as, for example, a life estate or a part interest as a tenant in common. A normal deed form would probably work, but let me hasten to add that I would NEVER suggest using one! I only mention that it probably would work in case someone else reads this answer and gets the idea that an attempted conveyance of mineral rights is necessarily invalid because the "wrong form" was used. A "normal" deed would be just effective enough to transfer the rights and create a mess at the same time.

Forms intended for conveying mineral rights may exist in real property or mineral rights encyclopedias in law libraries. A quick look at the multi-volume Miller & Starr encyclopedia on California real property did not turn anything up, however. You might find some by visiting your county law library and getting help from the librarian.

A caution about expecting to find a form you can use. Forms printed in legal encyclopedias and treatises are almost never of the "fill in the blanks: type. They are usually complete sample documents, fully filled in with sample clauses, often more than one clause per topic, along with a lot of italicized type explaining the selection process a lawyer would use in selecting among alternative clauses, or the rules for adapting standard clauses for the particular client need at hand. This is helpful for trained lawyers, but not at all useful for someone expecting to Xerox a few pages and then fill in the blanks with names and numbers.

One of the messiest parts of writing a mineral-rights sale or lease is that exploiting the mineral rights almost invariably requires heavy use of the surface as well. Therefore, the mineral rights often include surface rights by legal necessity, and the mineral-rights owner may be found also to have easements all over the surface. This is just one of many reasons why granting mineral rights by sale or lease is a specialty and should not be attempted by non-experts, whether lawyers or not.