If you live or are thinking of moving to Florida, let me recommend you look into Florida Land Trusts, if you want a little extra privacy. It's called a trust, but it's barely a trust from a legal-wonk perspective, but in any case, it's a legal mechanism to obscure the beneficial ownership of real estate from public view.
Discussion
Just found out about this from my wife. I’d didn’t know you can find where anyone lives just by knowing their name until I bought a house. Absolutely insane. I’m definitely doing this when I get my next and final “forever” house.
Ya no point in doing it where you already live that would be a trivial ruse to undermine. But if you do it right when you move, it can be fairly robust. Just dont be like a lot of retards and name yourself as the trustee/registered agent/officer of the land trust because that will be revealed in the public record.
How does a Florida land trust work?
It’s fairly straight forward but the long and short is this: 1) you create a trust instrument that explains the powers and obligations of the beneficiaries and the trustee, and names the beneficiaries and identifies the property to be deposited in trust. 2) the property is then deeded to the trustee “as trustee”; 3) the trustee deed is recorded but the trust instrument is not. Then the only public record of the ownership of the property is that it’s held in trust by whoever is the trustee (can sometimes be an entity). This is high level summary but that’s more or less how it works. The beneficiary is the “real” owner of the property but legal and equitable title pass to the trustee and in return the beneficial owner gets a “personal property” interest in the trust and usually the power to tell the trustee what to do with respect to the property, sell it, whatever, etc etc
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John, are trusts your specialty?
No, I'm more of litigation and litigation risk consultant if I had to put myself in a category. I have done a considerable amount of trust litigation, fwiw.
