Title and trust company as land trust trustee

[Tim Matthews]

Question about a land trust trustee: what are your thoughts about using a title and trust company as the land trust trustee for anonymity purposes? What are the pros and cons of using this setup, especially when it comes to wanting to refinance or get a HELOC on the property in the land trust?

[Jason Marino]

Hi Tim,

I have not heard of a title company acting in the role of Trustee of a Land Trust. As noted in the post above, this is often handled by an attorney or other times you can have an anonymous LLC that you control act as a Trustee. There are ways to maintain your anonymity while controlling the property. Additionally, while the post above is accurate in a Land Trust not providing asset protection on its own, a method that is used to avoid this is to make the Land Trust Beneficiary an LLC or a Delaware Statutory Trust. This gives you the benefit of both anonymity and asset protection.