Land Trusts - I want to start using them for privacy

[Chris Simmons]

Right now, everything I own is out there for the world to see in my name.  Going forward, I want to see about cloaking my ownership by putting everything I own now and will buy in the future into a land trust so that tax records will reflect some trust owns the property, not me.  Regarding the mailing address that will be listed on the tax assessor site, I will simply use the attorney's address that will handle all this for me so that I am fairly well hidden.

Does this work or sound logical?   Anyone else do it?  

I am also thinking about having seperate trusts....either one for each part of town that holds a few properties or maybe going so far as having a trust for each property simply named as the address.....ie 123 Main St Trust.    Same questions....logical?  Anyone else doing it?   Issues?

Again, the main goal is privacy. Asset protection is down the road with each landtrust benefitting an LLC, my attorney is recommending series llc's.

I don't want to own things in my llc directly for a variety of reasons at this point.

Please provide any insight or feedback on my concept for this land trust and please let me know if you do it differently.

Thanks

[James Miller]

Not in TX. Your state may be different. 

An LLC being the beneficiary of the land trust does not change ownership out of the trust. Since the trust is the legal owner, the trustee of the trust is exposed, particularly to premises liability exposure. Trusts also don't have the great charging order protections that Texas LLCs have. So no.

What you're describing is a (poor) attempt to get around a due on sale clause. 

A trust should own the LLC and the LLC should own the land if you're wanting both asset protection and relative anonymity. (At least in TX).

(I'm a lawyer licensed in TX but I'm not your lawyer. Http://lawjrm.com)