How to Read a Runsheet

The structure of a chain

A runsheet is a linked list. The root is the original patent from the United States government to the first private owner, typically in the late 1800s or early 1900s for Colorado. Each subsequent link is a recorded instrument — a deed, a probate, an assignment — that transfers ownership forward in time.

Reading the chain, you move link by link from patent to present, verifying at each step that the grantor owned what they conveyed and that the conveyance was properly recorded.

Grantor and grantee

Every link has a grantor (the party giving up the interest) and a grantee (the party receiving it). For a chain to be valid, the grantor of each link must be the grantee of a prior link — otherwise there's a gap.

A common source of confusion is trustees and estates acting as grantors. A deed from 'John Smith, Trustee of the Smith Family Trust' is a different chain of title than a deed from 'John Smith individually.' Verify the capacity in which each grantor is acting.

Fractional conveyances

Mineral deeds rarely convey 100%. A deed might say 'an undivided 1/16 interest in the minerals' or 'one-half of grantor's interest.' These two phrasings mean very different things.

'An undivided 1/16' conveys 1/16 of the total mineral estate regardless of what the grantor owned. 'One-half of grantor's interest' conveys half of whatever the grantor happens to hold, which requires knowing the grantor's interest from prior links in the chain.

Reservations and exceptions

A grantor can convey 100% of the surface while reserving 100% of the minerals — or any combination. The reservation creates a new mineral estate that runs in parallel with the surface chain from that point forward.

Reservations are the most common source of severed mineral rights. Every reservation in the chain creates a fork that must be followed to its current holder.

Common gaps

Probate gaps: owner dies, heirs take possession but never record the probate in the mineral county. Fix by pulling the probate file from the decedent's residence county.

JTWROS gaps: joint tenant dies, survivor takes automatically, but no death certificate is filed. Fix by obtaining the death certificate from vital records.

Mis-recorded names: grantor's name is misspelled or recorded under a nickname. Fix by searching alias variations in the grantor-grantee index.