Posted by John Merchant on October 27, 2006 at 13:31:30:
Depends on your state (?)law and what it requires of any trust owned property deed.
If (big IF in my opinion, as I’m skeptical that any state does require any trustee’s name) your state does so require, then I’d think seriously about using LLCs to take the title, where only the LLC Registered Agent, such as your lawyer or accountant, would show as the person to contact.
And of the two, remember that normally, your lawyer CANNOT legally divulge any info about you or your business…but the accountant has no such safety or professional privilege and anybody could drag him onto a witness stand to testify against you.
The nations’ biggest law firms and their business depts. do lots of business acting as the Reg Agents for millions of corps and LLCs so it’s not possible* for anybody to find anything from them.
*this privilege is being eroded, particularly in re criminal investigations, so it’s not as safe as it once was.
Yesterday at my county court house i look up an experienced investor that i know on the computer. When i put in his name about 10 listing came up. when i viewed each “deed listing” - not the physical deed itself- I was able to see the parites of the first part (who he bought from), and parites of the second part. On paries of the second part, his name was one of them and the name of his trust was the second. (Which was basically just “123 main st. Trust”) He personally was the trustee for each of these trust properties. Because my county entered his name as well as the trusts name in parites of the second part in the system, i could of searched by the trust name OR by his personal name. The entire point of the trust is so that your name does NOT show up in search criteria of public record, so that people can’t search by your name ( or your trustee’s by that matter)! I do not intend to be my own trustee in the first place, however if i use my friend, and someone looks up something they KNOW that i own, and sees that trustee, AND THEY CAN SEARCH BY THAT TRUSTEE’S NAME (ie my friend) THEY CAN ASSUME I OWN ALL THE OTHER PROPERTIES THAT COME UP. Is there anything i can do so that it can’t be searched by the trustee? Any ideas? I just want to make it as difficult as possible for people to figure out that i won a ton of real esate and link me to other properties because they can search it!
I appreciate your help!