Intestate Succession
The state-law rules that decide who inherits minerals and royalties when an owner dies without a valid will, set by the state where the minerals are located.
Intestate succession is the set of statutes that determine who inherits a person's property when they die without a valid will. Because minerals are real property, the law of the state where the minerals are located controls how they pass, not the law of the state where the owner lived. A landman runs these rules to figure out exactly which heirs now own a fractional mineral interest.
The shares vary by state, but a representative pattern is that a surviving spouse takes a portion and the children split the rest, with the precise split turning on whether the children are also the spouse's children and whether the property is separate or community property. Texas, for example, treats separate-property real estate very differently from community property.
Intestacy tends to fragment mineral ownership quickly. After two or three generations with no wills, a single tract can be split among dozens of cousins holding tiny decimal interests. An affidavit of heirship is often used to document the result. This is general information, not legal advice.