# Can I Back Out of a Mineral Rights Sale After Signing? > Signed a mineral rights purchase agreement or deed and want out? There is no general three day cooling off right, but Louisiana gives 60 days on mailed offers and Texas can void a deed disguised as a lease. What actually applies, and what to do today. Source: https://www.berlinroyalties.com/can-i-back-out-of-a-mineral-rights-sale/ Publisher: Berlin Royalties, a veteran-owned oil and gas mineral and royalty buyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, buying for its own account since 2014. Call or text 918-984-1645. License: free to quote and cite with attribution to Berlin Royalties and a link to the source URL. Before You Sign, and After ## Can I back out of a mineral rights sale? Nobody in this industry writes about this, for an obvious reason. Here is the honest answer, including the two state laws that actually give sellers a way out and that almost nobody mentions. [Ask a Landman, Free](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/) [Before You Sign](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/before-you-sign/) Short answer: usually it is hard, sometimes it is impossible, and occasionally it is far easier than you have been led to believe. Which one you are in depends on three things: what you actually signed, how the offer reached you, and which state the minerals sit in. Work through those three and you will know where you stand. **We are a mineral buyer. We are telling you how to get out of a contract with a company like us.** That is deliberate. If you want to talk it through with somebody who is not on the other side of your particular deal, we will do that for free and we will tell you when you need a lawyer instead of us, which on this subject is often. Nothing here is legal advice. ## First: there is no general three day right to cancel This is the most common wrong belief on the subject, and people act on it and lose time they did not have. The federal **Cooling-Off Rule** that gives you three business days to cancel a door to door sale does not apply to mineral rights. It excludes real property outright: a door to door sale does not include a transaction "pertaining to the sale or rental of real property" (16 C.F.R. § 429.0(a)(6)). It also excludes anything conducted entirely by mail or telephone, and it covers consumer goods and services and protects the *buyer*. A mineral owner selling minerals is outside it three different ways. So do not assume you have three days. Assume you have none until you have checked what follows. ## What did you actually sign? This changes everything, and the two are routinely confused because a buyer may send both at once. ### A purchase and sale agreement A contract to sell. Title has not moved yet. You are in a much better position here, because a contract has terms, and terms have conditions, deadlines and outs. Read yours for a termination clause, a title contingency, a closing deadline that has passed, or a due diligence period the buyer also gets. If the buyer has not performed, that matters. ### A mineral deed A conveyance. If it has been signed, delivered and recorded, title has moved and you are no longer arguing about a contract, you are asking a court to undo a transfer. Not hopeless, but a different and harder conversation, and one that needs an attorney rather than a landman. ### An option or a right of first refusal Common in mailed packages and frequently misunderstood as an offer letter. An option that has not been exercised, or that has expired on its own terms, may already be dead. If you are not sure which of these you signed, that itself is worth an hour with somebody who reads these for a living. See [before you sign](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/before-you-sign/) and [division orders](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/division-order/), which are yet another document people mistake for a sale. ## Louisiana: 60 days, and three years if they got the paperwork wrong The strongest seller protection in the country, and most Louisiana owners have never heard of it. Act 179 of 2016, at **La. R.S. 9:2991.1 through 9:2991.11**, covers a sale of mineral rights made **by mail solicitation**. Under La. R.S. 9:2991.6: - If the instrument **contains** the disclosure the statute requires, the seller may rescind **within sixty days** of signing it. - If the instrument **does not contain** that disclosure, the seller may rescind within a peremptive period of **three years** from signing. - Rescinding an option, a right of first refusal or a contract to sell in time also rescinds any act of transfer later executed under it. The statute also bars a buyer from moving jurisdiction outside Louisiana, from imposing indemnification clauses, and from making you waive these rights. So if your Louisiana mineral sale started with something that arrived in the mail, get the document out and look for the required disclosure. Its absence is not a technicality. It is a three year window. The law does not reach a sale that followed genuine prior contact between you and the buyer. It is aimed squarely at the mailed offer with a check attached. ## Texas: two statutes, and one of them can void the deed Texas does not give you a cooling off period. It does something narrower and, in the right circumstances, stronger. ### A deed dressed as a lease can be void **Texas Property Code § 5.152**, effective September 2019, applies when the acquiring person presents you an instrument titled "oil and gas lease" or something similar which actually conveys all or part of your mineral or royalty interest. That instrument must carry, in roughly 14 point type at the top of the first page: THIS IS NOT AN OIL AND GAS LEASE. YOU ARE SELLING ALL OR A PORTION OF YOUR MINERAL OR ROYALTY INTERESTS IN (DESCRIPTION OF PROPERTY BEING CONVEYED). and a shortened version above the signature on every later page. **If those statements are missing, the conveyance is void.** You may sue to remove it as a cloud on your title and recover the royalties and bonuses paid to the purchaser and its successors, plus costs and attorney's fees. Top leases are excluded. This is narrow on purpose. It does not help you if the document was honestly labeled a deed. It exists because of a specific trick. ### A mailed purchase offer has a disclosure requirement too **Texas Property Code § 5.151** requires anyone who *mails* you an offer to buy a mineral or royalty interest to include a conspicuous statement, again in roughly 14 point type: "BY EXECUTING AND DELIVERING THIS INSTRUMENT YOU ARE SELLING ALL OR A PORTION OF YOUR MINERAL OR ROYALTY INTEREST." If it is missing, you can give 30 days written notice of intent to sue and then recover the greater of $100 or the difference between what you were paid and fair market value at the time of sale, plus costs and attorney's fees, with suit filed within two years. Read that carefully, because it matters: § 5.151 gives you **money, not your minerals back**. The statute expressly excludes rescission. It is a damages remedy, and it can still be worth a great deal if the gap between the price and fair value was wide. ## Everywhere else We are not aware of any other state that gives a mineral owner a statutory right to cancel a sale. We checked Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, California, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Alabama, Alaska, Kentucky, Michigan and Mississippi and found none. Several of those states do have home solicitation cancellation laws, and they do not help you: they cover consumer goods and services, they exclude real property, and they protect the *buyer* rather than someone selling an asset. That leaves ordinary contract law, which is not nothing. Depending on the facts, a sale can be attacked for fraud or material misrepresentation, for mutual mistake about what was being conveyed, for lack of capacity, or for forgery. Undue influence comes up more than you would think where an elderly owner was involved. None of these are self service remedies. Each one needs a lawyer and evidence. ## What to do today, in order - **Do not cash or deposit the check.** Depositing payment is the single most damaging thing you can do to your own position, and buyers know it. If you already deposited it, say so to your attorney immediately rather than hoping it did not matter. - **Find every piece of paper and the envelope.** Whether the offer arrived by mail decides whether the Louisiana and Texas statutes apply at all. Keep the envelope. - **Write to the buyer today, and keep proof.** Say plainly that you are revoking and rescinding and do not intend to proceed. Send it certified with return receipt. This costs you nothing and it can preserve a position you have not yet had time to evaluate. - **Check the county records.** Search the grantor index under your name at the clerk in the county where the minerals sit and find out whether a deed has actually been recorded. You may still be earlier in this than you fear. - **Get a lawyer in the state where the minerals are.** Not where you live. This is real property law and it is local. - **Do not sign anything else**, including a correction deed, a ratification, or a new division order, until you have advice. ## The version of this that is much cheaper Never being here. Almost every seller who wants out signed under time pressure, or signed something they thought was a lease, or signed without a second number to compare against. Each of those is avoidable in a single afternoon. - [Got an offer letter?](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/got-an-offer/) and the [offer checker](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/offer-checker/), which tells you what a number implies before you accept it - [Questions to ask a buyer](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/questions-to-ask/), including the one about whether the offer number and the closing number are the same - [When not to sell](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/when-not-to-sell/) - [Complaints and disputes](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-complaints/), for what actually goes wrong ### Send us what you signed and we will tell you what it is. Free, and with no expectation that you ever sell anything to us. We read these documents every day. We will tell you which of the three things above you signed, whether the mail rules are in play, and when you need an attorney rather than us. That last answer is common and we will not dress it up. [Ask a Landman](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/) [Get a Free Valuation](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/) Berlin Royalties is the trade name of Berlin Resources LLC, a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa. It is not a law firm and this page is general information, not legal advice about your documents. Statutes are summarized and change; La. R.S. 9:2991.1 to 9:2991.11, Tex. Prop. Code §§ 5.151 and 5.152, and 16 C.F.R. Part 429 are cited so you or your attorney can read them directly. Whether any of them applies to you turns on facts we cannot see from here.