Hello everyone! I have two questions. I need your advise and opinions. We own property in Harrison County, OH.  We are wanting to separate our surface land from the mineral rights and continue to own both. I am thinking along the lines of what one member: Ron Eiselstein wrote that it is good for lots of reasons to do this. Does anyone know of a decent attorney who understands how to do this for our properly and is reasonably priced?  We only have 13 acres. There is some type of pipeline that runs across our property and we are in the Milliken plat.

Also we have been holding off signing our division papers thinking that we would like to separate the surface land from the mineral rights before signing. We may be wrong but thought it would make separating them easier before signing. The second question has to do with this.

For some reason we thought it may be best to separate the surface land from the mineral rights prior to signing the division papers.  Do you know where I got this idea?  Are we wrong?  This may be incorrect so we would appreciate your opinions regarding whether it matters or not regarding signing the division papers before or after separating land from minerals.

If you have a names of attorneys to pass on to us we would greatly appreciate it. We want to get this done as quickly as possible but we are not a wealthy family so need to keep costs down. Thanks for any and all suggestions and your varied opinions so we may find the best course of action.  Sincerely, Teri