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Calling lawyers, trust question

B

Bird222

Diamond Member
What is the best way to buy a house in a trust? Ideally, I would like the trust to buy the property so that my name was never associated with it. However, I'm not sure a bank would make a loan to a trust. How do people do this? Do they by the house and then just transfer it a trust (not ideal in my thinking)?
 
I think this is one of those times where telling us your end goal is a lot more helpful than asking about questionable intermediate activities. That said, why a trust and not a corporation? Why are you secretly buying a house that you can't even pay for? In most any structure, you will need some form of directors and a listing of those with significant beneficial ownership. Is your purpose to hide this from the public or the government? Do you have to hide it forever, or just for the sale?
 
Corporations have to file with the state and disclose their officers and boards. Trusts, afaik don't have those obligations. At least I don't believe that they do since the one time that I tried to get information about a trust that held a piece of property, I got absolutely nowhere.

In terms of buying the property, the simplest way is to buy the property outright and then transfer it to the trust. That way anyone looking at public records won't see your name associated with the property. They would have to look up the title history. Unfortunately in many places like my state, that information is also online.

So my guess is that you would have to transfer assets sufficient to pay for the property into the trust and then have the trust make the purchase. That should work. But that's just a guess.

Aside from that, I can't think of any way that you wouldn't leave some sort of paper trail that wouldn't be a matter of public record. Maybe if the trust had a verifiable source of income that could qualify for a mortgage, the trust itself could get the mortgage, but again, that's just a guess.
 
Almost every house I've ever purchased has been in a trust and there are a lot of good reasons to do it that way. It's slightly more paperwork and cost, but none of that is a big deal depending on your personal situation. Depending on how you have it setup and how good the lawyer is you hire to do this, it is possible to be completely hidden from the public's view. Of course, people can still figure out who you are by other means, so privacy can't be the only reason because, ultimately, there's no such thing.
 
drinkmorejava said:
I think this is one of those times where telling us your end goal is a lot more helpful than asking about questionable intermediate activities. That said, why a trust and not a corporation? Why are you secretly buying a house that you can't even pay for? In most any structure, you will need some form of directors and a listing of those with significant beneficial ownership. Is your purpose to hide this from the public or the government? Do you have to hide it forever, or just for the sale?
Click to expand...

I'm thinking more like "hiding it from future x-wife."
 
MrDudeMan said:
Almost every house I've ever purchased has been in a trust and there are a lot of good reasons to do it that way. It's slightly more paperwork and cost, but none of that is a big deal depending on your personal situation. Depending on how you have it setup and how good the lawyer is you hire to do this, it is possible to be completely hidden from the public's view. Of course, people can still figure out who you are by other means, so privacy can't be the only reason because, ultimately, there's no such thing.
Click to expand...
Can you elaborate on some of the fine points of this?
 
I'm not sure but I thought that loan documents got filed with the title. If that's true, then someone could in theory get that information by looking up the title. But it will probably be a while before that information is in a public database.
 
Bird222 said:
Can you elaborate on some of the fine points of this?
Click to expand...

The last two properties I purchased are owned by a trust that has no connection to me, at least publicly. Depending on who is looking, though, my name is attached in other ways. I suggest reading this and this and then contacting a lawyer to get information about your particular circumstance.
 
MrDudeMan said:
The last two properties I purchased are owned by a trust that has no connection to me, at least publicly. Depending on who is looking, though, my name is attached in other ways. I suggest reading this and this and then contacting a lawyer to get information about your particular circumstance.
Click to expand...
So did you get the mortgage in your name and then transfer it to the trust?
 
Bird222 said:
So did you get the mortgage in your name and then transfer it to the trust?
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No. The trust bought the houses, the beneficiary of the trust is an LLC, and I am a co-owner of the LLC. The embedded LLC is for liability reasons, which you may or may not need, and it doesn't really provide much separation because you can easily find the owner of an LLC. However, it's not easy to find the beneficiary of certain types of trusts. It can be done depending on who is looking, though.
 
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