Privacy trusts: protection through confidentiality.

By Tresp, Day & Associates · October 25, 2023

Much of asset protection is about making assets hard to reach. Privacy planning adds a complementary goal: making them hard to find. A contingency-fee lawyer evaluating whether to sue looks first at what a defendant visibly owns. If the picture is murky, the calculus changes.

How a privacy trust works

Title to real estate, business interests, or other assets is held in a trust (or a privacy-focused entity) rather than in your personal name, so public records don’t link the asset directly to you. You retain the benefit of the asset while your ownership stays confidential.

Privacy as deterrence, and protection

Confidentiality deters opportunistic litigation before it starts and complicates a creditor’s efforts to locate and value what you own. When the privacy layer sits on top of a substantively protective irrevocable structure, you get both deterrence and real protection, the asset is both hard to find and hard to reach.

A note on transparency rules

Privacy planning is legitimate and must be done within the law, including new beneficial-ownership reporting requirements. It keeps your affairs private from the public and opportunistic plaintiffs, not from tax authorities or a court with a valid claim. We structure privacy plans that are both effective and compliant.