A question for the legal minds on the site: Under Louisiana's community property laws, if a husband and wife owned a tract of land with mineral rights and one of them signed a lease and the other didn't, are all of the minerals tied up? Or are half of them up for grabs?

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The answer is no.
Each spouse would own 50% if it was comunity property.
It would be the same principle if they bought a house together,
In Louisiana, for an oil and gas lease on minerals owned in community to be valid both husband and wife must sign (a lease).
So a lease is not valid unless signed by both parties?

Also Jim, are you referring to changes in the Louisiana constitution?
Here:

Both husband and wife must sign a lease in order for it to be valid.

Jay
Nowdays but not a long time ago in Louisiana.
I inherited a track of land in Louisiana, sold it 3 years ago but retained 50% of the mineral interest, accepted a lease on my 50% interest (signed but no money received yet), all without my wife's signing anything. So, it is my understanding that inherited land/minerals are not considered community property. Isn't this correct?
waltcop,

That is correct. Inherited property IS separate property. As is property that is donated to you individually.
Thanks a lot to everyone who contributed to this post. If only this pool of knowledge to draw from had been available three years ago!
herefordnshale,

Jim brings up a point about separate property.

Usually property is community property, but sometimes property is acquired with separate funds of one of the spouses and is separate property. In this case, you sure would want to make sure that the "other" spouse acknowledged that it was separate property. If property is inherited or donated to one of the spouses, it would also be separate property.
I got into an issue last year on a succession that involved inherited property. The wife of one of my clients died, they owned a lot of property, some he inherited from his father, some they had purchased. We thought the inherited property was his since it was inherited but the attorney told us it was to be included in the succession. He said that simply paying the taxes out of a joint checking account was enough to communitize the property. So after that I assumed it took very little to communitize property.

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