Our firm is often called upon by legal clients to ascertain ancient ownership on lands holding oil & gas reservoirs or other natural resources. In addition, sometimes the search for ownership has nothing to do with the natural resources but might involve access rights to the land. In both cases, the original owners are deceased, and several generations may have followed.

Clients struggle with many of these cases because the surviving descendant owners of these lands are in question. Who now owns those resource rights? Who now holds ownership in the rights of access?

In many of these property cases, the original owner is now deceased, and successive generations have legally inherited his property rights, most often without knowing. Further, in some countries like Canada, the resource ownership went with the land, unlike today, and sometimes further, the land was sold, but the resource ownership was retained by the family or vice-versa. The legal ownership of these cases can, over time, get blurred.

GEN-FIND is here to help clients decipher, from a genealogical standpoint, who are the descendant owners of these properties and their entailing rights.