After the lease, this is the document most mineral owners actually have to deal with, and it is the one they sign fastest. It arrives looking like a formality that stands between you and your first check. In two states the law limits exactly what it may contain, and almost nobody reads it against that limit.
A division order is a statement of how the revenue from a well will be divided. It sets out the well or unit, the property, and your decimal interest, which is the exact fraction of every dollar of production revenue that belongs to you. You confirm the decimal, certify that you own what the payor thinks you own, and tell them where to send the money.
That is all it is. It is a payment instruction and a title certification.
It is not a lease, it is not an amendment to your lease, and signing it does not change what your lease says. This confusion is the single most expensive misunderstanding in royalty ownership, because payors have historically slipped lease-altering language into division orders, and owners have signed it without knowing they were giving anything up.
Both major producing states now say so in statute.
| Texas | Oklahoma | |
|---|---|---|
| Statute | Tex. Nat. Res. Code § 91.402 | 52 O.S. § 570.11 |
| Effect on the lease | A division order "shall not change or relieve the lessee's specific, expressed or implied obligations" under the lease, and any contradictory provision is invalid to the extent of the contradiction | Terms of a division order that conflict with the lease are invalid, unless the affected parties previously agreed to them |
| Statutory form | Yes, set out in subsection (d) | No statutory form |
| Limits on contents | Yes. Subsection (c) lists the only seven things a division order may require | Not enumerated, but conflicting terms are void |
| If you refuse to sign | If the division order contains only the seven permitted provisions, the payor may withhold payment without interest until you sign | Statute is silent |
| Can you get out of it | Yes. Terminable by either party on 30 days written notice | Statute is silent; ask in writing |
| Applies to | Division orders generally | Division orders executed on or after July 1, 1989 |
If you own in Texas, this list is your checklist. Under § 91.402(c), a division order may require only:
Anything else in the document is beyond what the statute permits. If a Texas division order asks you to agree to post production deductions, to accept a valuation method your lease does not provide for, to waive audit rights, or to ratify a pooling you never agreed to, that provision is outside the permitted list, and the refusal-to-sign penalty does not apply to a document containing it.
Owners who understand this line have real leverage. Owners who do not tend to sign whatever arrives, because the alternative appears to be no check at all.
The decimal is the number that matters, and it is wrong more often than owners assume, usually through clerical error rather than bad faith. The arithmetic is:
Your net mineral acres ÷ unit acres × your royalty rate × any depth or formation allocation = your decimal
Run it yourself with our free calculators, then compare the result to what is printed on the division order. If they do not match, do not sign. Ask in writing for the unit's allocation factor and a copy of the recorded pooling or spacing order, and reconcile from there. Operators generally correct genuine decimal errors and pay the arrears once someone shows them the arithmetic.
The leading case is Gavenda v. Strata Energy, Inc., 705 S.W.2d 690 (Tex. 1986). The rule that came out of it is two-sided, and both sides are worth knowing.
A division order binds you until you revoke it. If you signed a division order carrying a decimal lower than your lease entitles you to, you generally cannot recover the shortfall for the period you were paid under it, because third parties relied on the order.
But where the payor itself kept the benefit of the underpayment rather than distributing it to other owners, the payor has to give it back. The unjust enrichment exception is the part that gets owners their money.
In Texas you can end the arrangement going forward at any time on 30 days written notice under § 91.402(g). That is a right very few owners know they have.
Text a photo to 918-984-1645 or use Ask a Landman. We will recompute your decimal, tell you whether the document contains anything it should not, and explain what it means. Free, no obligation, and you do not have to be selling anything.
Ask a Landman Run the Decimal YourselfStatutory references are to Tex. Nat. Res. Code § 91.402 and 52 O.S. § 570.11 as of August 2026, verified against the statutory text. Other states differ and many have no division order statute at all. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm, and this page is general information rather than legal advice about your document. For a dispute worth real money, hire a lawyer in that state.