Posted by Marc Donovan on September 11, 2005 at 08:21:45:
In addition to what colvegas mentioned, you could use an attorney to be your trustee. You may have to call around to find a decent price. I am paying $100 per year per trust with a 250 setup fee. Typically all they do is forward mail and execute documents - even if there is a lawsuit. If you have a local real-estate club, you could convince a local attorney to handle all the trusts for the members for a special rate. Look for one who specializes in RE and trusts.
The biggest advantage to the land trust is your name does not show up on the tax rolls. So if you have a trustee who has hundreds of trust deeds on the tax rolls, no one will be able to figure out who really owns what. Thats why its best to use an attorney who does a lot of trust work. And an attorney is putting his practice on the line so you should be able to trust him - although some have been known to steal, but its usually when there is cash lying around (F Lee Bailey comes to mind).
If you use yourself as trustee, your name will be on the tax rolls. Granted, it will say Steve as trustee, but it won’t take a genius to figure out what you own. It is not hard to do the same thing with a corp. First, see if Steve is an officer of any corporation, then search the tax rolls for anything the corp owns. An extra step, but still easy. Out of state, just makes the search harder, but not impossible. Although some states dont list officers.