In dog we Trust

A (family) trust is the new black. Mostly popular with the middle-aged and older people trying to protect their assets from legal liability or old-age care, you gift all your assets into a trust, which becomes their legal owner, not you. Unfortunately, you can only "gift" $27,000 a year before it becomes taxable, so if you own a really expensive house or whatever, it can take years to "gift" the house to the trust. On this logic, it seems that buying a first house using a trust would be a good move (thereby having the trust the owner upfront).

Apart from all the usual wranglings involved with sorting something like this out, you also have to come up with a name for your trust. A lot of people give their trust unoriginal names. How many Smith Family Trusts do you think there are? Thus, to avoid confusion between a whole lot of legal entities with similar names, I have to come up with a creative name. The question is, do I go with something unique and cool, or a little bit unique and silly.

This is rather reminiscent of the time that I considered incorporating The Centre for Subversive Studies. Incorporation used to be relatively cheap (around $35), and you needed something like 25 signed up members I think. One of the cool things about having an incorporated society is that you get your own seal (well more of a stamp). Unfortunately, probably due to a few too many people like me incorporating silly societies, they put the price up to around $200.

A bunch of librarians and hangers-on of my acquaintance once started a chocolate lovers society (or at least I think they started it). And to think anyone would *ever* accuse librarians of not knowing how to have fun.