Privacy and a Trust in Minnesota: What the Records Show, and What They Still Show After You Fund One

The argument the sales pitch skips

Trust marketing leads with probate and with creditors. This site’s other guides show what those claims are worth: the probate saving is real but narrower than advertised, and a revocable trust does nothing at all about the settlor’s own creditors. Privacy is the reason nobody is selling, and it is the one where the machinery actually does something — as long as the claim is stated to the width of the record rather than to the width of the pitch.

So: which records carry a name, which rules govern who may read them, and which of those two things a trust changes. This page describes that machinery. It does not apply it to anyone’s situation, and it cannot.

What the county already publishes

Minnesota’s default for government data is disclosure. Minn. Stat. § 13.03, subd. 1:

All government data collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated by a government entity shall be public unless classified by statute, or temporary classification pursuant to section 13.06, or federal law, as nonpublic or protected nonpublic, or with respect to data on individuals, as private or confidential.

The county recorder’s office has its own, older, blunter version. Minn. Stat. § 386.17:

The county recorder shall exhibit free of charge, during the hours that the office is or is required by law to be open, any of the records or papers in the recorder’s official custody to the inspection of any person demanding the same, either for examination, or for the purpose of making or completing an abstract or transcript therefrom . . .

Any person demanding the same. There is no requester test, no stated purpose, no fee for looking.

What makes those records findable by name rather than by parcel is the index. Under § 386.03 every county recorder keeps a grantor’s and grantee’s reception index, and “every entry made therein shall be made in the reception index under the grantor’s surname, and under the grantee’s surname.” Section 386.19 repeats the obligation for the record books: an alphabetical index “to record, under the proper letter of the alphabet, the name of each grantor and grantee of any instrument delivered for recording.”

Surnames. That is the hook a stranger, a data aggregator, or anyone else pulls on.

The assessor’s side works by subtraction. Minn. Stat. § 13.51 classifies a short list of assessor data as private or nonpublic — multiple-listing sales sheets held under a nondisclosure contract; and, for income properties, detailed income and expense figures, average vacancy factors, verified net rentable or net usable areas, anticipated income and expenses, projected vacancy factors and lease information; plus income information on individuals collected to determine class 4d eligibility. Owner of record is not on that list. Under § 13.03, subd. 1, data no statute classifies is public — which is why a county’s online property search returns a name.

A deed to a trustee still names somebody

Funding a house into a revocable trust means recording a deed, and the conveyance runs through a trustee rather than through the trust as such. Minnesota’s homestead statute describes the arrangement as property “held by a trustee under a trust” (§ 273.124, subd. 21), and the certificate-of-trust statute’s real-property recital is that “[t]he trustees are authorized by the instrument to sell, convey, pledge, mortgage, lease, or transfer title to any interest in real property” (§ 501C.1013, subd. 2).

If the settlor is also the trustee, which is the ordinary arrangement in a revocable living trust, the settlor’s name goes on the face of the recorded instrument and into the surname index. The transfer is public, the new owner is public, and the name in both places is the same name that was there before.

Two things change that. A trustee who is not the settlor puts a different surname in the grantee column. And a trust name that does not carry the family’s name — as opposed to “The Jane Q. Anderson Revocable Trust” — keeps the family name out of the trust’s half of the entry. Neither is a feature of a trust. Both are drafting choices someone made or did not make.

Then there is the document the trust world offers as its privacy instrument, and it deserves a hard look. A certificate of trust under Minn. Stat. § 501C.1013 exists so a third party never sees the dispositive terms; its own guide works through what it does. Subdivision 1 requires the certificate to contain, among other items:

(3) the name and address of each trustee empowered to act under the trust instrument at the time of execution of the certificate;

And a certificate used for real property, under subdivision 2, “shall identify the name of each settlor and the name of each original trustee.” Subdivision 3 permits it to be recorded with the county recorder or the registrar of titles.

Read those three subdivisions together. The certificate keeps the beneficiaries, the amounts, the ages and the conditions out of the recorder’s office — a genuine and substantial privacy result, and the one a trust really delivers. It does not keep names out. A recorded real-property certificate of trust names every settlor and every original trustee, with an address for each trustee, in a file § 386.17 opens to any person demanding it.

The homestead application, which is not the deed

A Minnesota home held in a trust can keep its homestead classification. Section 273.124, subd. 21 provides that property “held by a trustee under a trust is eligible for classification as homestead property” on any of five alternative conditions, the first being that the grantor or the grantor’s surviving spouse occupies and uses it as a homestead. The house guide covers that ground.

The privacy consequence sits in the application, and one qualifier has to ride with it. Subdivision 13(a) directs a person who meets the homestead requirements “under subdivision 1” to file an application; trust-held property qualifies under subdivision 21, which carries no application requirement of its own, and the house guide works through that gap. What subdivision 13(c) settles is what an application demands whenever one is filed. Section 273.124, subd. 13(c):

Every property owner applying for homestead classification must furnish to the county assessor the Social Security number or individual taxpayer identification number of each occupant who is listed as an owner of the property on the deed of record, the name and address of each owner who does not occupy the property, and the name and Social Security number or individual taxpayer identification number of the spouse of each occupying owner.

Social Security numbers, and the name and address of any owner who lives somewhere else. Those are collected by a county office in the course of preserving a tax classification the trust did not disturb.

The classification of that data is better than the collection suggests, and it is not uniform. Minn. Stat. § 13.355, subd. 1 makes Social Security numbers collected or maintained by a government entity private data on individuals, “except to the extent that access to the Social Security number is specifically authorized by law.” Section 273.124, subd. 13c confirms the numbers “maintained by a county or city assessor for property tax administration purposes . . . retain their classification as private or nonpublic data,” and subdivision 13(d) separately classifies the number of a relative occupying the property, or that relative’s spouse, as private.

Now the exception, which is the part a privacy page has to print. Section 13.355, subd. 2:

Subdivision 1 does not apply to Social Security numbers that appear in documents or records filed or recorded with the county recorder or registrar of titles, other than documents filed under section 600.23.

The private classification is a rule about the assessor’s file. It is expressly not a rule about the recorder’s file.

What a Minnesota vehicle title actually says

Chapter 168A is the title statute, and its definitions are the place to start. Section 168A.01, subd. 13 defines an owner as “a person, other than a secured party, having the property in or title to a vehicle.” Subdivision 14 then defines the person:

“Person” means an individual, firm, copartnership, association, corporation, or governmental organization.

A trust is not on that list. A trustee — an individual, or a corporate trustee — is. Hold that against what the department instructs below, which is to title in the name of the trust and the grantors; the section’s definition of “person” and the agency’s worked example do not obviously describe the same owner, and this guide does not reconcile them.

The application follows the same natural-person / other-owner split. Section 168A.04, subd. 1(1) requires “the first, middle, and last names, the dates of birth, and addresses of all owners who are natural persons, the full names and addresses of all other owners.” The certificate mirrors it. Section 168A.05, subd. 3(a) requires the certificate of title to contain “(2) the first, middle, and last names and the dates of birth of all owners who are natural persons, and the full names of all other owners” and “(3) the residence address of the owner listed first if that owner is a natural person or the address if that owner is not a natural person.” And under subd. 2(a)(3) the department maintains its record of every certificate “alphabetically, under the name of the owner.” Registration runs on the same information: § 168.11, subd. 1 says the registration certificate “shall contain the full name and date of birth, place of residence, with street and number, if in a city, and post office address of the registered owner.”

Under chapter 168A alone, an owner that is not a natural person yields a name and an address, without a date of birth and without a residence address. That is a real, if modest, difference. It does not carry over to § 168.11, subd. 1, which contains no natural-person split and describes the registration certificate’s contents in terms — date of birth, place of residence with street and number — written for a person.

Then there is what the agency actually instructs. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Driver and Vehicle Services page on transferring a deceased relative’s vehicle addresses revocable trusts directly, and it is the sentence that bounds this entire argument:

To be able to use the revocable trust document to transfer ownership of a vehicle, the vehicle must be titled in the name of the trust and the grantors (For example: Jones Trust, John Jones-Grantor).

The name of the trust and the grantors. The department’s own worked example puts a living person’s full name on the title beside the trust’s. That instruction is written for the case where somebody later needs the trust document to move the vehicle — DVS states the titling form that makes the trust document usable, and says that if the vehicle was not titled in the name of the trust, trust documents cannot be used to transfer ownership. It is not a general rule about every possible trust titling. It is, however, the agency’s published guidance on the arrangement most people mean when they talk about putting a car in a trust, and it points the opposite direction from the privacy pitch.

One more thing the same page shows, under its own condition. “When the grantor is deceased,” DVS says, the appointed trustee signs the title as seller and must submit, among other items, “[a] copy of the trust document showing his or her appointment as trustee.” Not a certificate of trust. Whether a Minnesota deputy registrar will take a § 501C.1013 certificate in place of the instrument is not answered on that page, and this guide does not answer it.

Who is allowed to run the plate

This is the part people assume a trust fixes, and it is governed by a federal statute that never mentions trusts.

The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2721(a), bars a state department of motor vehicles, and any officer, employee or contractor of one, from knowingly disclosing or otherwise making available “personal information . . . about any individual obtained by the department in connection with a motor vehicle record, except as provided in subsection (b),” and from disclosing “highly restricted personal information” without express consent except under four of those subsections. Section 2725 supplies the terms: a motor vehicle record is “any record that pertains to a motor vehicle operator’s permit, motor vehicle title, motor vehicle registration, or identification card issued by a department of motor vehicles”; personal information is “information that identifies an individual, including an individual’s photograph, social security number, driver identification number, name, address (but not the 5-digit zip code), telephone number, and medical or disability information,” and excludes information on vehicular accidents, driving violations and driver’s status; highly restricted personal information is narrower still — photograph or image, Social Security number, medical or disability information.

Subsection (b) opens by providing that personal information “shall be disclosed” for a set of vehicle-safety, theft, emissions, product and manufacturer-record purposes, and then says it “may be disclosed” for fourteen listed uses. Government agencies, including any court or law enforcement agency, carrying out their functions, and private parties acting on behalf of a federal, state or local agency. Motor vehicle or driver safety and theft; emissions; product alterations, recalls or advisories; performance monitoring of vehicles, parts and dealers; market research including surveys; and removal of non-owner records from manufacturers’ original owner records. A legitimate business, in the normal course of business, to verify personal information a person submitted to it and — if that information is wrong — to obtain the correct information, but only to prevent fraud by, pursue legal remedies against, or recover on a debt or security interest against, that person. Any civil, criminal, administrative or arbitral proceeding in a federal, state or local court or agency or before a self-regulatory body, including service of process, investigation in anticipation of litigation, and the execution or enforcement of judgments and orders, or pursuant to a court order. Research activities and statistical reports, so long as the information is not published, redisclosed or used to contact individuals. Insurers, insurance support organizations and self-insured entities, and their agents, employees and contractors, for claims investigation, antifraud, rating or underwriting. Notice to owners of towed or impounded vehicles. Licensed private investigative agencies and licensed security services, for any purpose otherwise permitted in the subsection. An employer, its agent or its insurer, verifying information about a commercial-driver’s-license holder as required by federal law. The operation of private toll transportation facilities. Individual records where the state has obtained the subject’s express consent. Bulk distribution for surveys, marketing or solicitations where the state has obtained express consent. Any requester demonstrating the subject’s written consent. And any other use specifically authorized by the law of the state holding the record, if it relates to the operation of a motor vehicle or public safety.

Wanting to know who owns that car is not on the list. Section 2722 makes it unlawful for any person knowingly to obtain or disclose personal information from a motor vehicle record for a use not permitted under § 2721(b), or to make a false representation to obtain it. Section 2724 gives the individual a civil action in federal district court, with actual damages “but not less than liquidated damages in the amount of $2,500,” punitive damages on proof of willful or reckless disregard, fees and costs.

Minnesota adopts that framework by reference. Minn. Stat. § 168.346, subd. 1(a):

Data on an individual provided to register a vehicle shall be treated as provided by United States Code, title 18, section 2721, as in effect on May 23, 2005, and shall be disclosed as required or permitted by that section.

Note the subject of that sentence: data on an individual. Whether, and how, § 168.346, subd. 1 operates when the registered owner named on the record is a trust or a trustee rather than an individual is not answered by the section’s text, and this guide does not answer it either. The DPPA’s own definition points the same direction — § 2725(3) protects “information that identifies an individual” — while the DVS titling instruction above puts a grantor’s personal name on the record, which plainly is such information. That is an open question, stated as one.

What is not open: the trust changes the name on the record. It changes nothing about who may obtain the record. Every entity on the fourteen-use list still gets what the title and registration carry, and under § 168.346, subd. 2 the commissioner “shall disclose personal information when the use is related to the operation or use of a vehicle or to public safety,” with discretion to refuse where the requester is likely to use the data for illegal, improper or noninvestigative purposes.

Minnesota also offers something a trust does not, in the same section. Subdivision 3 lets an individual registered owner request in writing that the owner’s residence address, or name and residence address, be classified as private data. The commissioner grants it on a signed statement that the classification is required for the safety of the owner or the owner’s family, provided the statement gives “a valid, existing address where the registered owner consents to receive service of process” — and the commissioner then uses that service-of-process address “in place of the registered owner’s residence address in all documents and notices pertaining to the vehicle.” The data stays available to law enforcement, probation and parole agencies, and public authorities as defined in § 518A.26, subd. 18.

And since August 1, 2026 there is a second substitution, on the document a driver is actually asked to hand over. Laws 2026, ch. 67, § 7 amended Minn. Stat. § 171.01, subd. 45d so that for a Safe at Home participant the “residence address” and “permanent mailing address” for a driver’s license or Minnesota identification card are the designated address under § 5B.05 carried on the participant’s current and unexpired program card. A driver’s license and an identification card are records that pertain to a motor vehicle operator’s permit under 18 U.S.C. § 2725(1), so this is the substitute address reaching inside the same body of records the DPPA governs. It is not something a trust does, and the Safe at Home section below sets out the rest of the program.

Cameras collect plates, not names

Minn. Stat. § 13.824 governs automated license plate readers in Minnesota, and it is unusually specific about what one is permitted to gather. Subdivision 2(a):

Data collected by an automated license plate reader must be limited to the following:

(1) license plate numbers;

(2) date, time, and location data on vehicles; and

(3) pictures of license plates, vehicles, and areas surrounding the vehicles.

Collection of any data not authorized by this paragraph is prohibited.

No name, no owner, no address. Subdivision 2(b) classifies all of it as private data on individuals or nonpublic data, unless public under § 13.82, subd. 2, 3 or 6, or active criminal investigative data under § 13.82, subd. 7. Subdivision 2(c) restricts matching: reader data “may only be matched with data in the Minnesota license plate data file,” with additional sources allowed only where they relate to an active criminal investigation, and a central state repository of reader data is prohibited unless explicitly authorized by law. Subdivision 3(a) requires destruction of data unrelated to an active criminal investigation “no later than 60 days from the date of collection.” Subdivision 5 requires a public log of use, including the locations of fixed readers. Subdivision 6 requires an independent biennial audit whose results are public, and lets the commissioner of administration suspend an agency’s readers on a finding of a pattern of substantial noncompliance. Subdivision 8 requires each agency to notify the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension within ten days of installing or using a reader, and requires the BCA to publish the resulting list on its website.

That last one is checkable today. The BCA’s published list named 116 Minnesota law enforcement agencies as of September 8, 2026 — sheriff’s offices, city police departments, the State Patrol, MSP Airport Police, a tribal police department and a university department among them. The list is vendor-neutral: it names no manufacturer, product or service anywhere on the page. So 116 is the number of Minnesota agencies reporting a reader of any kind, and it is not a count of any one company’s customers.

The chain from a photograph to a person therefore has two links, and they are governed by different statutes. The camera link is § 13.824, which forbids collecting a name. The identity link is a look-up in motor vehicle records, which is the DPPA and § 168.346. A trust operates on neither the camera nor the access rules. It operates on one field in the record the second link reads.

Flock Safety is the vendor in the Minnesota version of this argument, and it is named here on Minnesota sources rather than on the company’s own. MPR News reported on August 17, 2026 that Minnesota cities and counties are divided over Flock cameras, naming Fridley, Medina, Winona, North Branch, Duluth, Columbia Heights and West St. Paul among the communities that have deployed, restricted or ended them; the City of North Branch publishes a police department page describing a potential Flock Safety partnership, alongside a public-hearing notice and a draft reader policy. Every one of those cities appears on the BCA list. This guide states nothing about how Flock’s product works, what it retains, or with whom it shares — those are claims about a company, and they are not verified here. The Minnesota rules in § 13.824 apply to the agency operating the reader regardless of whose equipment it is.

The private-camera question is partly answered inside the statute and partly not. Subdivision 1(b) defines a reader to include “a device that is owned or operated by a person who is not a government entity to the extent that data collected by the reader are shared with a law enforcement agency.” So a homeowners’ association’s or a retailer’s camera is inside § 13.824 to the extent its data reach law enforcement, and outside it otherwise. What governs a purely private plate camera whose data never go to an agency is not answered by § 13.824, and no other Minnesota statute retrieved for this guide answers it. That question is open.

Safe at Home is the state’s actual instrument

Minnesota already built a mechanism for the harm this whole conversation is circling, and it is not a trust. Chapter 5B establishes an address confidentiality program administered by the Secretary of State. Section 5B.01 states the purpose: to let state and local agencies respond to requests for data “without disclosing the location of a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or harassment or stalking,” and to let participants use a designated address “as a substitute mailing address for all purposes.”

Eligibility under § 5B.02(e) is broader than the title suggests. An eligible person is an adult, a minor, or an incapacitated person for whom there is good reason to believe either that the person is a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or harassment or stalking, or that the person “fears for the person’s safety, the safety of another person who resides in the same household, or the safety of persons on whose behalf the application is made.” The person must reside in Minnesota or certify an intent to within 60 days. A person registered or required to register as a predatory offender is not eligible. Certification under § 5B.03, subd. 3 runs four years for a Minnesota resident, 60 days for an applicant from outside the state.

The operative rule is § 5B.05(a): when a participant presents the designated address, “that address must be accepted as the address of the program participant,” and the person or entity “must not require the program participant to submit any address that could be used to physically locate the participant either as a substitute or in addition to the designated address, or as a condition of receiving a service or benefit, unless the service or benefit would be impossible to provide without knowledge of the program participant’s physical location.”

The same paragraph is the one place in Minnesota law where this program and a trust-held house meet, and it has to be read to the end of the paragraph rather than to the end of the sentence:

Notwithstanding a person’s or entity’s knowledge of a program participant’s physical location, the person or entity must use the program participant’s designated address for all mail correspondence with the program participant, unless the participant owns real property through a limited liability company or trust. A person or entity may only mail to an alternative address if the participant owns real property through a trust or a limited liability company and the participant has requested that the person or entity mail correspondence regarding that ownership to an alternate address.

Two sentences, and the second one governs. Owning a house through a trust does not by itself release anyone from the designated-address rule. An alternative address becomes available only when three things are true together: the participant owns real property through a trust or a limited liability company, the participant has requested that correspondence go to an alternative address, and the correspondence is about that ownership. It is an option the participant switches on, not an exposure the trust creates. The Legislature contemplated the trust-held house and handed the participant the switch.

The two mechanisms are meant to sit side by side, not to substitute for one another.

The real-property machinery is in Minn. Stat. § 13.045. Under subdivision 2(b), a participant files a real property notice with the county recorder where the property sits, and with the responsible authority of any other government entity holding real property records. The notice carries the participant’s full legal name, the last four digits of the Social Security number, date of birth, designated address including lot number, the legal description and street address, the Secretary of State’s address, and a signature; one parcel per notice; the notice itself is private data. Subdivision 4a then bars the entity from disclosing the participant’s identity data in conjunction with that property in its real property records, subject to four exceptions — the participant’s written consent, a court order under § 13.03, subd. 6, an authorization from the Secretary of State under subdivision 4b, and sharing with a government entity for administering assessment and taxation laws. Entities must build procedures that “may include masking identity or location data and making documents or certificates of title containing the data private and not viewable,” and those procedures must comply with chapters 386, 507, 508 and 508A “to the extent these requirements do not conflict with this section.”

The same subdivision then carves something back, and it matters on a page built around the reception index. Subdivision 4a “does not prevent the public disclosure of the participant’s name and address designated under chapter 5B in the county reception index if the participant’s name and designated address are not disclosed in conjunction with location data.” The name can remain in the index. What comes off is the pairing of that name with where the person is. Subdivision 4b gives a title examiner a route, and the deadline in it sits on the front half rather than the back. The Secretary of State “shall approve or deny a request for access to data within two business days” — that clock runs on the request. The substantive answer under paragraph (b), a written affirmation that the property under examination is or is not subject to a participant’s real property notice, carries no deadline of its own; what it carries is finality, because a party examining title “may rely conclusively” on it.

Three more places the program reaches, each retrieved for this guide. Section 13.824, subd. 3(c) requires reader data related to a program participant to be destroyed at the time of collection or on receipt of a written request, whichever is later, unless the data are active criminal investigative data — and the existence of the request is itself private. Section 5B.07 classifies essentially everything the Secretary of State holds about a participant as private, and provides that “[a] consent for release of the address from an applicant, eligible person, or program participant is not effective.” Section 5B.11, as amended in 2026, applies where a participant’s address is protected under § 5B.05, and bars compelling any person or entity to disclose the actual address in discovery or in a proceeding unless the tribunal finds both that “there is a reasonable belief that the address is needed to obtain information or evidence without which the investigation, prosecution, or litigation cannot proceed” and that “there is no other practicable way of obtaining the information or evidence”; requires the tribunal to find that the potential harm to the participant’s safety is outweighed by the interest in disclosure; limits any disclosure to no wider than the purpose requires; and, before directing disclosure, requires a written order making findings on all of that, served on the Secretary of State, unenforceable for at least 30 days after service — waivable only on a written finding that the requirement would violate a defendant’s right to a speedy trial. In a criminal proceeding the court must order disclosure where withholding would violate a defendant’s confrontation right.

A currency note, because the published statute text lags the session laws. Laws 2026, ch. 67, signed May 5, 2026, runs to nine sections. Among them it amended §§ 5B.02, 5B.03, subd. 1, 5B.11 and 5B.13, added a nondiscrimination section at 5B.14, required every executive-branch agency head to designate a Safe at Home coordinator under § 43A.36, and — at sections 7 and 8 — amended two provisions of chapter 171 this page has a direct interest in. Stating no effective date anywhere in the act, it took effect August 1, 2026 under Minn. Stat. § 645.02. The § 5B.11 description above is the amended version. Section 5B.02(e), the eligibility standard quoted above, carries no amendment in the act; neither does § 5B.05; neither does the § 13.045 real property machinery.

Section 7 is the one to read twice, because it enlarges the designated address rather than leaving it alone. It amends Minn. Stat. § 171.01, subd. 45d so that “residence address” and “permanent mailing address,” for purposes of a driver’s license or a Minnesota identification card, now also mean:

(2) for a participant in the Safe at Home address confidentiality program administered by the secretary of state, the designated address under section 5B.05 that is listed on the participant’s current and unexpired program participation card.

The substitute address moves onto the license — the document a driver is most often asked to produce, and the one a trust has never touched. Section 8 amends § 171.0605, subd. 5 to add, as clause (27), “an unexpired Safe at Home card, as defined by Minnesota Rules, part 8290.0100, subpart 19” to the documents that prove a Minnesota principal residence, with a card carrying a “temporary” designation excluded. The revisor’s published text of § 171.01, subd. 45d still shows only the three pre-amendment clauses, and § 171.0605, subd. 5 still stops short of clause (27); both sections carry the 2026-session banner, and Table 2 records both changes as 2026 c 67 ss 7 and 8.

What a trust adds beside all that is one thing: a name in the grantee column that is not the participant’s. What Safe at Home does that no trust does is compel other people to accept a substitute address, and compel a county to stop publishing identity data with a parcel. Those are different tools for different halves of the problem, and neither is a version of the other.

The people-search question

People-search sites and data brokers aggregate what counties publish. Minnesota’s own consumer privacy statute is the place to test whether that can be undone, and it answers cleanly and unhelpfully.

The Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act, §§ 325M.10 to 325M.21, gives a consumer the right under § 325M.14, subd. 1(d) “to delete personal data concerning the consumer,” along with rights to access, correct, port, opt out, question profiling, and obtain a list of third parties. Those rights run to personal data, and § 325M.11(p) defines the term:

“Personal data” means any information that is linked or reasonably linkable to an identified or identifiable natural person. Personal data does not include deidentified data or publicly available information. For purposes of this paragraph, “publicly available information” means information that (1) is lawfully made available from federal, state, or local government records or widely distributed media, or (2) a controller has a reasonable basis to believe has lawfully been made available to the general public.

Information lawfully made available from local government records. That is a description of the recorder’s index and the assessor’s property search. The Attorney General’s consumer page on the Act states the same limit in its own words, noting that the law does not restrict deidentified data or data that is publicly available. The Act also has a threshold: under § 325M.12, subd. 1 it applies only to entities that control or process the personal data of 100,000 consumers or more, or derive over 25 percent of gross revenue from selling personal data and handle 25,000 consumers or more.

The sourced statement is therefore narrow and worth having: a public property index makes an owner’s name available to anyone who searches it, and Minnesota’s consumer deletion right is defined so that it does not reach information lawfully available from that index. How any particular site obtains or refreshes its records is a factual claim about that company, and this guide makes none.

What a trust does not hide, from anyone

From the settlor’s creditors. Minn. Stat. § 501C.0505(1): “During the lifetime of the settlor, the property of a revocable trust is subject to claims of the settlor’s creditors.” Whether or not the trust has a spendthrift provision. That has its own guide.

From a court. Even Safe at Home, which is far stronger than a trust, yields to a tribunal’s findings under § 5B.11. A trust’s own privacy is thinner than that: it lasts exactly as long as nobody files, and the will-versus-trust guide sets out the Rules of Public Access that reach the publicly accessible portions of a trust case file once someone does.

From the taxing authorities. A revocable trust does not create a separate tax identity. Under 26 C.F.R. § 301.6109-1(a)(2)(i)(B), a trust treated as owned by one grantor need not obtain its own taxpayer identification number, provided it reports under 26 C.F.R. § 1.671-4(b)(2)(i)(A) — which requires the trustee to “[f]urnish the name and taxpayer identification number (TIN) of the grantor or other person treated as the owner of the trust, and the address of the trust, to all payors during the taxable year.” The alternative under (b)(2)(i)(B) is to furnish “the name, TIN, and address of the trust.” There is a narrow, real privacy result inside the first option and it is worth stating exactly: paragraph (e)(1) of the same regulation directs that the trustee “should not give the Form W-9, or a copy thereof, to a payor because the Form W-9 contains the address of the grantor,” since (b)(2)(i)(A) requires the trust’s address rather than the grantor’s. The payor gets the grantor’s name and Social Security number, and the trust’s address. Not a hidden owner. A different mailing address.

From Driver and Vehicle Services and law enforcement. The certificate of title names an owner and an address, the department indexes it by owner name, and § 2721(b)(1) permits disclosure to any government agency, including any court or law enforcement agency, in carrying out its functions.

From the county assessor. A homestead application, whenever one is filed, requires the Social Security number or individual taxpayer identification number of each occupant listed as an owner on the deed of record, and the name and address of each owner who does not occupy.

What is actually left

Stated to the width of the record, the privacy result of a Minnesota revocable trust is this. The dispositive terms — who inherits, in what shares, at what age, under what conditions — stay out of the county recorder’s office and out of a probate file, and that is a substantial thing to keep private. The owner’s identity does not, unless the trustee is somebody else and the trust’s name carries no family name. The rules about who may read a motor vehicle record are federal and do not vary with how the vehicle is titled. And the state’s purpose-built answer to being physically located by someone dangerous is chapter 5B, which does work no trust performs.

A trust is a real privacy instrument with a narrow blade. Sold as a cloak, it is the same overselling this site exists to correct — just pointed at a benefit that happens to be true.