# The Indiana Mineral Owner's Guide | Berlin Royalties > A free plain-English guide for Indiana mineral owners: the 20-year Dormant Mineral Interest Act and the statement of claim, no payment statute, the small severance tax, the heirship affidavit that moves minerals, and ten questions for any buyer. Source: https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/indiana/ 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. Mineral Owner's Guide ยท Indiana ## The Indiana mineral owner's guide. Indiana is the state where the Supreme Court said a severed mineral interest can simply expire. Twenty years without use, no notice required, and it reverts to the surface. The cure is a one-page filing with the county recorder, and most families have never heard of it. [What Are Mine Worth?](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/) [Ask a Landman, Free](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/) This is the whole guide, on one page, free, with nothing gated. It covers what you own, the Indiana law that decides what lands in your bank account, whether your minerals can be taken from you, what happens if a well is drilled and you are not leased, what you owe when you sell, and the questions worth asking any buyer including us. ## 1. What you actually own Almost every confusing thing in oil and gas comes from the fact that the mineral estate is not one thing. It is a bundle of five rights that can be split apart and sold separately: - The right to **develop**, including surface access - The right to **lease**, called the executive right - The right to receive **bonus** - The right to receive **delay rentals** - The right to receive **royalty** A **mineral interest** is all five. A **non-participating royalty interest** is only the fifth, with no say in leasing and no share of bonus. An **overriding royalty interest** is carved out of a particular lease and dies when that lease dies. A **working interest** takes revenue net of costs and, unlike all of the above, can lose you money. Which one you hold changes the value, the tax treatment, and who has to sign what. In southwest Indiana most family interests are fractions under shallow Illinois Basin sands in Posey, Gibson and Vanderburgh, often dating to the Griffin discovery in 1938; in east central Indiana, Trenton-era reservations from the 1880s still sit in title under 21 counties. Start here: [NPRIs](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/non-participating-royalty-interest/), [overriding royalties](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/overriding-royalty-interest/), and the [glossary](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/glossary/). ## 2. Can money be taken out of your Indiana check? Indiana has no statute allocating post-production costs between lessor and lessee, and we located no Indiana appellate decision that settles whether the state follows the at-the-well rule or the marketable-product rule. Your lease language controls, and it controls more completely in Indiana than in a state with a settled default. An Indiana owner negotiating a new lease should insist on an express no-deductions clause rather than relying on background law that is not there. Your first move if the deductions look wrong is a written demand by certified mail, keeping the receipt, because the certification is what starts the clock. Our [free letter templates](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/letter-templates/) have the wording and the [statement decoder](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/royalty-statement-decoder/) explains every line on the stub. ## 3. When Indiana has to pay you Indiana has no statute setting payment deadlines or late-payment interest on private leases. The state-land royalty statute, **Indiana Code 14-38-1-26**, reaches state-owned minerals only. That means your lease's payment clause is the whole rulebook, and a lease that says nothing leaves you with a demand letter and the courts. Before you sign a new Indiana lease, get a payment deadline and an interest rate written in. | **Minimum payment rule** | Not set by statute. || **Time limit to sue over an underpayment** | Governed by general contract limitations | A stopped check very often is not a stopped well. The usual causes are a balance under the minimum threshold, a title change putting the interest in suspense, an unprobated death in the chain, an address the payor could not deliver to, or a change of payor after an acquisition. That money does not disappear; it sits in suspense and after three years goes to the Indiana Attorney General's unclaimed property program. See [unclaimed royalties](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/unclaimed-royalties/). ## 4. Can you lose your Indiana minerals? Yes, and Indiana's law is the strictest in the country. Under the **Dormant Mineral Interest Act, Indiana Code 32-23-10**, a severed mineral interest unused for **20 years** is extinguished and reverts to the owner of the surface estate it was carved from, with **no notice required before the lapse**. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in *Texaco v. Short*, 454 U.S. 516 (1982), five to four. Use means actual production, injection or storage operations, payment of rentals or royalties, use on a pooled or unitized tract, payment of taxes on the interest, or a recorded **statement of claim** under 32-23-10-4 listing the owner's name and address and the land, filed with the county recorder before the 20 years run. Filing counts as use from that date, and the recorder keeps a separate dormant mineral interest record. A successor claiming the lapse publishes notice in the county newspaper and mails it within ten days if an address is known; an owner of ten or more interests in the county who missed by inadvertence has 60 days from publication to file. The right cannot be waived in advance. What this means in practice: if the interest has not produced, been leased, paid taxes, or had a statement of claim recorded since the 1990s, it may already belong to the surface owner. If it has not reached 20 years, a one-page filing saves it. We check the dormant mineral record in every Indiana purchase and tell you what we find whether or not you sell. ## 5. If they drill and you are not leased We could not confirm an Indiana compulsory pooling statute with an election menu and a statutory penalty of the Oklahoma kind, and we would rather say so than invent one. Indiana's Division of Oil and Gas regulates spacing and permitting, every permit in the state is vertical, and in practice an unleased owner in the Illinois Basin is either leased before drilling or left out of the well. If you receive anything that looks like a pooling or integration notice in Indiana, send it to us the day it arrives and we will read it free, because the answer will be in the document rather than in a statute we can point you to. The reason any of this matters is the [rule of capture](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/rule-of-capture/): a well on the tract next to yours can legally drain oil and gas from under your land, and you cannot sue anyone for it. Being leased into the unit is what converts being drained into having a share. See also [forced pooling deadlines by state](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/pooling-deadlines-by-state/). ## 6. What Indiana takes **Severance tax.** Small. The Indiana Petroleum Severance Tax, **Indiana Code 6-8-1-8**, is the greater of **1 percent of value** or 24 cents a barrel of oil and 3 cents per thousand cubic feet of gas. It comes off before your royalty is figured, and at today's prices the 1 percent usually governs. **When you sell.** Indiana has a flat individual income tax and taxes nonresidents on Indiana source income, including gain on the sale of Indiana minerals; most counties add a local income tax. We found no Indiana withholding at closing on a mineral sale. **Indiana repealed its inheritance tax for deaths after 2012** and has no estate tax. See [taxes when you sell mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-rights-capital-gains-tax/), and if you inherited the interest, understand the **stepped-up basis** before you sell anything: your basis is generally the value at the date of death, not what your grandparents paid, which frequently means far less taxable gain than owners expect. ## 7. Inherited minerals and probate in Indiana Often no full probate is needed, which makes Indiana easier than most of its neighbors. The small estate affidavit under **Indiana Code 29-1-8-1** (up to $100,000 for deaths after June 30, 2022, with a 45-day wait) is personal property only and does not move minerals. But **Indiana Code 29-1-7-23** provides that real property passes at death to the devisees or heirs subject to administration, and lets any person record an affidavit in the county stating the decedent's name and date of death, the vesting deeds, the distributees, and how each share passed. The recorded affidavit is prima facie evidence of the transfer, and after seven months with no letters issued it also shows the property is free of sale for the estate's debts. Buyers and examiners in the basin rely on it for inherited minerals more than on probate. A nonresident's estate may still need an ancillary step under Indiana Code 29-2-1, and a **transfer on death deed under Indiana Code 32-17-14** avoids the question for the next generation. The single most common thing we see is an interest still sitting in the name of someone who died twenty or forty years ago, which in Indiana is also the single biggest dormant mineral risk. It is fixable, it is cheaper to fix than to leave, and we coordinate and pay for whichever route the title needs as part of a purchase. See [inherited mineral rights in Indiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/inherited-mineral-rights/indiana/), [selling before probate is done](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/sell-inherited-minerals-probate/), and [transferring inherited minerals](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/transfer-inherited-minerals/). ## 8. Where the Indiana records are The Indiana DNR Division of Oil and Gas runs a free **well records viewer** searchable by operator, permit number and location, with scanned well files, and publishes a weekly permit list and monthly reports of permits, completions and plugged wells. The Indiana Geological and Water Survey's **Geological Database Management System** (formerly PDMS, free since 2025) holds formation tops, logs and cores for more than 195,000 locations. What Indiana does **not** publish is lease-level production: gas sales reports are confidential and oil is published statewide only, so your division orders, check stubs and 1099s are the record of what your interest pays. Neither state database searches by owner name. Land records, and the dormant mineral interest record, are at the county recorder. Our [well records by state](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/well-records/) page links every state's free public search, and our [operator directory](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/operators/) covers more than 38,000 operators with contact information refreshed weekly. ## 9. How valuation actually works Producing royalties are priced off cash flow and decline. Non-producing minerals are priced off location and activity. Almost every offer you receive is built the same way: take your last twelve months of royalty income and apply a multiple. That method has one predictable failure, and it is worth understanding because it is where most owners lose money. **It assigns a value of zero to anything that has not happened yet.** In Indiana the flip side matters as much: a Griffin field royalty that has paid since the 1940s at a slow, flat decline is a durable asset, and a multiple built for a shale well in its second year undervalues it badly. A new vertical program like Campbell Energy's 32-well Fort Payne drilling in Posey County, a coalbed methane permit in Vigo, or a carbon storage footprint over your tract are not in last year's income either. Ask any buyer, including us, to show you their decline assumption and the reasoning behind it, and ask whether they checked the dormant mineral record before quoting. If they will not break it out, they are pricing your check rather than your minerals. See [how mineral rights are valued](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-rights-value/). ## 10. Ten questions to ask any buyer - Are you buying for your own account, or brokering this to someone else? - What entity will appear on the deed, and can I look it up? - Show me your valuation. What did you assume for price, decline, and remaining locations? - How many undrilled locations did you count, and at what probability? - Who pays title work, document preparation, and recording? - Is there a minimum interest size, and are you buying part of what I own or all of it? - How long is this offer open, and what happens if I say no? - Will you tell me if you think I should keep it? - Is there money sitting in suspense on this interest, and who keeps it? - Who at your company will answer the phone in six months? You are welcome to use every one of these on us. That is the point of publishing them. ### Send us what you have. We will tell you what it is. A check stub, an old deed, a division order, a pooling order, or just the county. We will identify the interest, check the dormant mineral record, value it with the arithmetic shown, and tell you honestly if you should keep it. Free, no obligation, and no mailing list. [Get a Free Valuation](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/) [Ask a Landman](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/) ## More on Indiana - [Selling mineral rights in Indiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/indiana/), with the full state detail - [Inherited mineral rights in Indiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/inherited-mineral-rights/indiana/), what heirs should do - [Royalty payment laws by state](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/royalty-payment-laws/), with statutory citations - [Division orders: what to check before you sign](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/division-order/) - [Compare your options before selling](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/compare-selling-options/) and [when not to sell](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/when-not-to-sell/) - [Got an offer letter?](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/got-an-offer/) and [before you sign](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/before-you-sign/) - [Owner's guides for the other states we buy in](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/) Every state guide [Alabama](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/alabama/)[Alaska](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/alaska/)[Arkansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/arkansas/)[California](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/california/)[Colorado](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/colorado/)[Illinois](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/illinois/)[Kansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/kansas/)[Kentucky](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/kentucky/)[Louisiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/louisiana/)[Michigan](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/michigan/)[Mississippi](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/mississippi/)[Montana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/montana/)[New Mexico](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/new-mexico/)[North Dakota](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/north-dakota/)[Ohio](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/ohio/)[Oklahoma](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/oklahoma/)[Pennsylvania](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/pennsylvania/)[Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/texas/)[Utah](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/utah/)[West Virginia](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/west-virginia/)[Wyoming](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/wyoming/) Twenty-two states, one guide each, written for owners rather than lawyers. Free, and no sign-up. Last reviewed November 2026. Statutes, rates, and case law change, and where Indiana law is genuinely unsettled or we could not confirm a statute we have said so rather than filling the gap. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm or a tax advisor, and this guide is general information rather than advice about your interest. For a dispute worth real money, hire a lawyer in Indiana.