Ohio title work is tricky. The Marketable Title Act and Dormant Mineral Act make it trickier. Get MTA or DMA wrong, and you're looking at bad leases, wasted labor, and potential trespass issues.

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Over the past three years, Dudley Land Company has prevented multiple MTA and DMA errors for our clients. Not because we're lucky, but because we handle leasing, title work, and unitization under one roof.

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This case study examines how our full-service approach catches title issues that have a high probability of being missed with segmented broker approaches. If you're working in Ohio, you need to understand MTA and DMA. More importantly, you need to know how to avoid the mistakes that keep happening across the basin.

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Understanding the Challenge: MTA and DMA Complexity

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The Marketable Title Act (MTA)

The Marketable Title Act was created with the intent to make land ownership more clear and certain by getting rid of old claims that haven't been used in years. Unfortunately, like many aspects of title, the "more clear and certain" point is not always obvious to those that haven't been around the MTA for long periods.

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The 40-Year Rule: If a surface owner has an unbroken chain of title for at least 40 years back to a "root of title," the law says the earlier reservations are generally extinguished.

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Savings Events: Certain events can save a reservation from being wiped out:

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• The interest is specifically identified in the chain of title
• The interest holder records a notice claiming their interest
• The interest arising out of a title transaction recorded after the root of title

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The Dormant Mineral Act (DMA)

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A mineral interest is not abandoned if, within the last 20 years, any of these saving events have happened:

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• Oil and gas was produced from the property
• The mineral interest was leased, transferred, or sold
• The Mineral Owner recorded a claim/notice in the Recorder's office to preserve their rights
• A tax parcel was created for the mineral interest

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Common MTA and DMA Issues

The complexity of these laws creates predictable problems across the industry:

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Mineral Owner Confusion: Landowners do not fully grasp the concepts of the MTA or DMA and require a landman to walk them through the situation.

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Heirships Hiding Ownership: Until ownership is run out for large heirships, it is impossible to verify if savings events occur.

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Poorly Executed Redemption Attempts: The vague and multiple laws have led to many DMA attempts that fail to meet the burden the law requires.

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Timing: Due to the time frames the laws have, it is possible for MTA or DMA to not be possible one year but possible a few years later. Title always needs to be current.

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Misunderstanding of the MTA and DMA application to title can lead to significant financial penalties via bad leases, wasted labor, and possible trespass issues. We prevent these mistakes with three things: specialized knowledge, seamless communication, and constant monitoring.

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The Dudley Approach: Knowledge, Communication, and Monitoring

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Misunderstanding of the MTA and DMA application to title can lead to significant financial penalties via bad leases, wasted labor, and possible trespass issues. We prevent these mistakes with three things: specialized knowledge, seamless communication, and constant monitoring.

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Knowledge: Specialized Expertise Where It Matters

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Localized Management: All Dudley Land Prospect Managers are based in the region that they are working so they can specialize in a specific state. This allows them to focus on troublesome regional issues like MTA and DMA and avoid the pitfalls that others may miss.

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Relationships: In title, there are always exceptions that can create a grey area. Dudley has been working with law firms across the basin for 15 years. We leverage those relationships periodically to make sure we are correct in our application of the law.

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Technology: By using our proprietary land management program (Kudu), we provide our agents with more information to ensure they are pursuing the correct landowner and that they are armed with the most recent data the title team has collected.

Communication: Seamless Integration Between Teams

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Direct Messaging: Since Dudley can handle both the leasing and title activities, the communication around the MTA and DMA efforts are more seamless between title and leasing teams.

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Accountability: While brokers try to play nice with each other, it’s just not possible for them to hold each other accountable when the leasing and title teams are split between separate brokers.

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Improved Owner Relations: By using a full-service broker like Dudley Land, it is easier for leasing teams to explain title issues to landowners. This reduces their needs to reach out to the clients for answers.

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Monitoring: Continuous Quality Control

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Leadership: Dudley teams use a layered leadership approach. With a Prospect Manager and Crew Chief leading the project, it gives two levels of quality control. This reduces the need for client action.

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Full Team Integration: Our proprietary land system (Kudu) allows our buyers to access owner and tract notes in real time. No need to wait for the standard weekly spreadsheet update.

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Turnover: Fully integrated projects become entrenched with clients. This gives the field landman more ownership in the projects. It reduces turnover and increases communication and engagement.

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Dudley's Full-Service Advantage

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Our approach cuts down on client landmen being a go-between for various brokers. That means your team can focus on more pressing issues.

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Dudley’s ability to manage all project phases under one roof, from initial leasing through title to unitization for drilling, has consistently proven to be the most efficient approach. Internal audits done by our clients have shown that "Dudley is miles ahead of the other brokers in the play."

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Our approach cuts down on client landmen being a go-between for various brokers. That means your team can focus on more pressing issues.

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Real Results: Two Critical Issues Caught and Resolved

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Example 1: The Harrison DMA Issue

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We leverage our expertise in title to drive the leasing process. Title abstractors create the leasing targets for our buyers. This allows detailed information to be passed along to the buyers so they can convey the information to the mineral owners.

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Our buyers have also been instrumental in proving that prior DMA efforts were not followed properly. In Ohio, some attorneys only published the DMA efforts in the local newspaper and made no efforts to track down individuals. Pairing the buyers with our heirship teams has allowed Dudley to expose multiple instances where the rightful owners are just a county away.

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The Situation: The Harrison's owned a tract that had a severance in 1910 made by James R. Peterson and Clara H. Peterson, his wife, by Robert E. Peterson their attorney in fact; Michael W. Peterson and Sarah J. Peterson, his wife; Elizabeth L. Peterson, unmarried; Charles R. Peterson, unmarried; and Robert E. Peterson, unmarried, being all the heirs at law of Henry Peterson, deceased, as Grantors.

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The Problem: In the Harrison's 2012 DMA affidavit, it lists the Henry Peterson, Deceased, his heirs, successors and assigns as the interest holder and does not specify the names that were actually outlined in the severance deed. This invalidated the affidavit.

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The Complication: When it was brought to their attention, the Harrison's filed a new affidavit. Unfortunately, they had already sold the surface (with a reservation), so the second affidavit was also invalid due to the Harrison's not being the current surface owner. They later would sell their mineral interest to a mineral buyer, but there is no word if they were ever paid.

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The Result: We leased the correct owners and moved on.

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Example 2: The Whitfield MTA Issue

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The Situation: During a period of heavy leasing, another broker was brought in to help expedite title. The other broker was assigned a portion of a future unit to abstract. They ended up leaving a 2/5ths interest in the heirs of Whitfield but never brought the interest forward due to time constraints on the project. This resulted in a 1898 reservation being inaccurately credited in the title opinion.

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The Discovery: It wasn't resolved until Dudley ran another tract that involved the same heirship. Our Dudley team was able to bring the heirship forward and prove that the reservation was extinguished by MTA for that parcel.

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The Impact: Our unitization team noticed the difference and requested that the attorney review the other tracts ran by the other Broker. All the tracts were updated to extinguish the reservation.

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The Value: While an heirship was run out that was not leased in the end, it did correct the title on multiple tracts. A broker that was not involved in the unitization process and leasing process might not have noticed the inconsistency. They might have taken the heirship from the incorrect Title Opinion and brought it forward, leasing countless individuals incorrectly.

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Why Full-Service Was the Right Choice

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Over the last 3 years, there have been multiple instances of MTA and DMA being applied incorrectly throughout our area of interest. Fortunately for our clients, Dudley Land was handling all aspects of the leasing, title, and unitization. This allowed us to catch these issues without causing our clients any financial loss. If they would have used a segmented broker approach, there’s a high probability that some of these issues would have been missed.

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What This Means for Your Ohio Projects

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If you're working in Ohio, you need to ask yourself three questions:

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1. Does your title team have 15+ years of relationships with Ohio law firms to navigate the grey areas of MTA and DMA?
2. Are your leasing, title, and unitization teams integrated, or are you playing go-between with multiple brokers?
3. Can your field agents access real-time title data, or are they working from outdated spreadsheets?

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MTA and DMA issues don't announce themselves. They surface when another broker misses an heirship, when a DMA affidavit was filed incorrectly years ago, when timing makes a previously valid title opinion suddenly wrong.

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The difference between catching these issues and missing them comes down to integration. When your leasing team can talk directly to your title team, when your unitization team reviews the same data your abstractors created, inconsistencies get caught before they become problems.

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Know your costs upfront for both dollars and days. That's what 45+ years of integrated land management experience in Ohio delivers.