We are asked a lot "Who should be my Trustee?" In our Land Trusts Made Simple home study course we have an entire chapter on answering this question. But, for this posting, let us cover the basics. You have a choice to make, either your Trustee will be an individual or an entity. You definitely DO NOT want to be the Trustee of your own land trust. This is stupid on many levels.

If you chose an individual your Trustee could be a friend, relative, attorney or anyone else. Obviously, you want your Trustee to be trustworthy, reliable, accessible, dependable and inexpensive. Just remember, if you are setting up a land trust the Trustee must be a resident of the state in which the trust is citus. In other words, if you are setting up a Florida land trust then you need a Florida Trustee.

If you chose an entity to be your Trustee it could be a title company, independent trustee company, corporation, LLC or the Trustee of another trust. The advantages of using institutional Trustees are; typically more experienced than miscelleous individuals, bonded and insured (in case the make a mistake), regulated by state agencies and immortal (they will not die on you). However, the disadvantages to using an institution include; costs, (fees for everything they do), inaccessability (they have set office hours that do not include weekends and evenings) and they are easy to locate (you may not want your Trustee found so easily).

So, as you can see, deciding who will be your Trustee is not an easy question to answer. Think it thru and make a wise decision!

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