I'm about to inherit some Standard Oil stock from my grandparents.

As long as you don't liquidate it and intermingle it with community property it's yours.


Not a lawyer

I'd say the most plausible fact pattern is that his grandfather's will was from before 1972, and referred to Standard Oil of New Jersey, which used the Esso brand (and also the Enco & Humble brands) before becoming Exxon. Of the seven sisters from the 1911 split, SONJ had the most reach in the southeastern United States.

EDIT: It still doesn't make a lot of sense as to why it would be coming to him now, unless the will went unchanged for over 45 years.

EDIT2: Fun fact... the Esso brand is still used for gas stations in Germany and Switzerland to this day.

Congrats on the windfall.

Post an update when it’s resolved, I’m very curious.

Just curious with this being (likely) an old standard oil paper stock certificate... do you know if he has been receiving dividends?

That’s the first thing I thought of. This should have been converted long ago to receive or reinvest the dividends, though maybe that is still possible. Definitely something you should ask about.

Looking up the 1972 and 1999 changes, it appears that 1972 was just a name change, and 1999 was an acquisition of Mobil using Exxon stock. So it seems that 100 shares of Standard Oil would still be 100 shares of ExxonMobil, that is before incorporating ordinary dividends and splits, which you can do with Yahoo for XOM.

The 1/1/1972 close of XOM is given as $2.35, with an adjusted close of $0.30, so that means that theoretically, 100 shares of Standard Oil at the beginning of 1972, carried through with dividends and splits, should be worth about 100 x ($2.35 / $0.30) = 783 shares of ExxonMobil today (with the latest close being at $81.98). The 783 XOM shares would be worth about $64,218, compared to the $235 worth of 100 SO shares at the beginning of 1972. That works out to a multiple of around 273, or about a 13% geometric mean for nominal annual returns.

I could have made a mistake somewhere though, as I'm not really used to dealing with this type of stuff.

Testate. The will stated that everything be split between his 3 children and if one of his children are deceased it be passed along to grandchildren(my brother and I).

Let us know what happens. I'd like to tell my students this story for US HIST

Guys I don't plan on splitting with the wife I probably could have phrased it a little better. I was genuinely curious But I'll let you guys know in the next couple of days the stock info.