The flow chart above shows who owned the property and the mineral rights for the property at " W2 SW Sec1 - 4S - 11E " starting in 1903 and going to the present. (All the addresses and names in this chart are fictitious.) Such flow charts start with the earliest documented records. Drawing chain of title with RFFlow is easy. The difficult part for landmen is finding the information in the County Records to prepare the chart. The data is often entered into in a spreadsheet or runsheet first and then moved to a flowchart. The data is in chronological order. This chart has a box for each transfer of title and each box includes:

1. The Grantee, who is acquiring the land
2. The instrument, usually a deed, offically showing the transfer with enough information to locate the document, and the date of the document
3. The date of record when the transfer becomes official
4. A description of the property. It is good to include a picture of the plot if available.
5. A statement about the mineral rights

You may want to include more information in each box. If you are doing the chart for a Title Attorney, they will specify the data needed. These charts can get really long. If you have to print on standard size paper, you will need a multi-paged chart. The second and final page for this chart is shown below.

If you haven't already done so, first download the free trial version of RFFlow. It will allow you to open any chart and make modifications.

Once RFFlow is installed, you can open the above charts in RFFlow by clicking on landman-chart-1.flo or landman-chart-2.flo. From there you can zoom in, edit, and print this sample chart. It is often easier to modify an existing chart than to draw it from scratch.

To draw this chart without downloading it, run RFFlow and use the Sample Stencil.

Some helpful hints:

1. We use the terminal shape to show where the chart starts and ends. This is optional but we think it is a good idea.
2. Landman charts basically use the standard rectangle, which is the 23rd shape from the top in the Sample Stencil. Click the shape and enter the text. The shape expands around your text.
3. To show that the chart continues on another page, draw a circle with a letter and reference that same letter on a folowing page.
4. To insert a picture, click Insert in the main menu of RFFlow and then click "Picture from File."
5. The last three boxes show the Grantor and the Grantee, which is actually more clear and could be done throughout the entire chart.
6. Land is often divided up among the offspring. A sample of this is shown below. Determing the mineral rights over several generations can get complicated.

7. Sometimes the landman will be unable to find the next deed or even a record of death, so the chain of title is incomplete. In such cases, just use a bracket shape, type BREAK, and explain the circumstances as shown below. Then search for relatives and continue with the next recorded deed.

8. Remember that these charts are only as good as the data. Acquiring the data is the hard part and that is what landmen get paid for.