Date Published:
June 17, 2026
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TLD 063 - Division Orders 101: How Royalty Owners Get Paid with Rebekah Stringer
Guests
Rebekah Stringer
Every royalty check starts with work most people never see. After a lease is signed and a well starts producing, someone has to review title, build the deck, and make sure every owner's decimal interest adds up to a perfect 1.0 before anyone gets paid. That someone is a division order analyst, one of the most important and least understood roles in the land business.
Rebekah Stringer, President of the Houston Association of Division Order Analysts and a division order supervisor with twelve years in the field, joins Brent and Khalil for a ground-up tour of the land back office. She walks through the full lifecycle from title review to payment, explains suspense and escheat, and gets into the people side of the job: owner relations, what stays in-house versus what gets outsourced, and how the next generation finds its way into a profession most people stumble into by accident.
Key Topics & Timestamps
00:46 - Back Office Matters
02:33 - Rebekah's Career Path
06:46 - Inside Division Order Work
12:15 - Division Orders and Suspense
24:11 - Escheat and Finding Owners
31:00 - Licensing Tiers and Costs
32:02 - PI Tools and Ethics
33:57 - Outsourcing Division Order Work
41:45 - Clean Handoffs and Spreadsheet Reality
52:27 - Talent Pipeline
Memorable Quotes
"Make it add up to 1.0." — Rebekah
"Handling owners is a huge part of what we do." — Rebekah
"It's not just getting people paid, it's making sure you've got everything papered up and documented properly." — Brent
"Nobody really knows what a division order analyst is, or even that we exist." — Rebekah
Key Takeaways
- The back office is where royalty owners actually get paid. After a lease is signed and a well comes online, the division order team reviews title, builds the deck, confirms every interest adds up to 1.0, and sends out division orders so owners can go into pay.
- A clean handoff that adds up to 1.0 makes everything easier. When an in-house landman hands over a division of interest that totals exactly 1.0, the division order team can set up the well and get owners paid without untangling a title problem first.
- Owners carry the responsibility to keep their records current. Operators can't pay or update an owner they don't know about, so address changes, sales, and deaths all sit with the owner to report. That's why suspense exists and why empathetic owner relations matter so much.
- Some work has to stay in-house. Well setups, deck setups, and complex transfers carry too much downstream risk to outsource. Owner relations, pay code changes, and escheat support are safer to hand off when a team needs to flex up.
- The profession faces a talent gap, and associations are the way in. Most analysts found the field by accident, and experienced analysts are retiring with their knowledge. Groups like NADOA and HADOA offer the trainings, mentorship, and networking that bring new people in.
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Resources
- Houston Association of Division Order Analysts (HADOA)
- National Association of Division Order Analysts (NADOA)
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More From Our Guests
- Rebekah Stringer, President of the Houston Association of Division Order Analysts and board member of the National Association of Division Order Analysts
- Connect with Rebekah on LinkedIn
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