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equally, whether or not any asset was titled in the name of one
or the other spouse.
The Mineral Leases
The nearly 600 mineral leases involved here, all of which
petitioner acquired during marriage, covered lands located in
Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma,
Utah, Wyoming, and in the community property States of Arizona
and New Mexico. The leased lands were not in active production
when petitioner assigned his leasehold or overriding royalty
interests to Mrs. Grynberg. None of the properties was connected
to a pipeline, and on only one or two had wells been drilled;
hence, the properties’ values, for the most part, were
speculative.
Given the then-undeveloped state of the leases, petitioner
feared that the Danzig claimants would seize them, sell them on
foreclosure for nominal prices far below their supposed future
values, and hold petitioner liable for the deficiency. In an
effort to prevent such conduct and acting on his own initiative,
petitioner launched his series of assignments to Mrs. Grynberg,
which he duly recorded and for which she paid nothing. At his
office, however, petitioner kept blank assignment forms bearing
his wife’s signature as assignor, permitting retransfer of the
mineral interests to himself.
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