Cloaking your property ownership in the public record...

Question in California regarding a title holding trust. We had a property vested similar to "John Smith, trustee of 123 Main Street trust". In a small claims action, the HOA won a judgment against "John Smith, trustee of 123 Main Street Trust"

Our questions:
John Smith was not named individually as a defendant. So will any of the properties that he owns in his own name be attached? He is getting ready to refinance his home and just trying to see if there will be any issues. We have already forwarded to our title rep to get their take but interested to see what others on the board think.




In most instances, the party who creates and deeds their property into a trust fills the roles of the trustor, trustee and beneficiary of that trust. Therefore most title companies, attorneys, and even courts treat them all as the same person.

Thus, it’s the burden of the trustee to prove that he/she/it is not the controlling party (beneficiary) of the trust. The effort to do so is an arduous one since most title officers, lenders, attorneys, etc deal primarily with living trusts where almost always the three trust roles are melded into one person.

One very effective maneuver is to use an outside trustee with a different name to be the trustee of your “street name” trust. For example “Financial Fitness, LLC, trustee of the Main Trust, dated 04-29-15”.

So any law suit, judgment, etc. would be in the name of the LLC…not your name, since the owner of the property is in an entity that doesn’t reflect your name.

--------------------------Ward

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