Desert Estate Planning Law Blog : Palm Springs Estate Planning Lawyer & Attorney : Daryl Binkley Law Firm : Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Southern California

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Coveted as the most glamorous event of the year in the Coachella Valley, the 22nd Annual “Palm Springs International Film Festival” will be starting this week. This will include a Black-Tie gala, screenings of films from all around the world, seminars and talks by directors, and a myriad of other events.

For a week or so, this would be the place to see some celebrities, see the movies and talk about their work and the upcoming Oscars.  Note the Film Festival is a result of "The Palm Springs International Film Society is a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization whose mission is to cultivate and promote the art and science of film through education and cross-cultural awareness."

Much of what celebrities, such as Natalie Portman, Colin Firth and Ben Affleck, will wear and look like will be talked about in the press. But one aspect of what celebrities do regarding their assets might not be covered so much. Given so much attention they get in the news (and from the paparazzi) generally they do take some steps to make your search for where they live and what they own a bit harder. 

If you own a piece of real estate or two, or more (you probably know this already) it would be fairly easy for anyone to type in your name in google or many of the real estate websites (such as blockshopper.com) and find out what real estate you own and even a pretty good approximation of the purchase price (if the transaction was relatively recent). With one or more clicks of a mouse, google satellite map can show you how your house looks like and even what car you drive in front of your house. A little creepy, isn’t it? And apparently has caught some people in the aerial photos, too.

This information was always in the public records—but now the Internet has made this search extra easy. So what are things celebrities might do to protect their privacy, and that you may research more about as to whether you would like to incorporate as well (although it may be somewhat cost prohibitive for normal people):

1.       Your home doesn’t need to be under your personal name, it can be under the name of a business entity—which might add an extra layer of privacy, and an extra layer of cost to your yearly budget. Note, this may or may not be incorporated into an Asset Protection plan, but for this discussion, we are using an entity, such as an LLC only for privacy purposes and NOT for Asset Protection (that would require many more Blogs to discuss).   So someone just searching under your name would not be able to find real estate (assuming you have used an additional “Manager” in the business entity to have capacity to hold legal title, which could be another entity within an entity).

2.       If you own many properties, such as rental properties you can utilize the LLC formation to manage one or all of them, or have multiple LLC’s and there are formations such as serial LLC’s. Each real estate property will then not show up under your name but the name of LLC. This is commonly used by serious and/or serial real estate investors—i.e. investors of commercial real estate.

3.       There is also the option of using trusts to create a layer of protection, but this is generally not done by the public. For example if the name of the trust is your name and you are the trustee that will not be much privacy. However, you could be more creative with the naming of the trust, and consider using another trustee named for the purpose of holding title. Another benefit of the Trust is that it is a probate avoidance device, so that upon the Trustor’s death (the person(s) that set up the trust), probate court proceedings should not be necessary. A probate involves court proceeding that are generally open to the public. 

4.       Check your online identities, google yourself periodically to see what shows up. If you have any social media sites (such as Facebook) check the privacy settings to ensure that your personal information stays intact.

Taking these steps can involve costs, additional administrative steps, and some other pitfalls. So anyone wanting to take any of these steps should seek legal counsel to discuss their personal situation. Further, this discussion is not about trying to protect your privacy to avoid creditors—that can be a serious mistake to attempt to do that—such as being fraudulent transfers.

Also on a personal note, my wife and I are excited to be attending some of the festivities of the PSIFF and to have donated to the underlying great non-profit organization. Attendance at many, if not all of the events includes a donation to the Palm Springs International Film Festival.