I mean, this isn't THAT odd. The man is in his 70s, he's probably just started the process of transferring his assets to his children so as to avoid estate taxes.
If I were to hazard a guess, if you had access to the nitty gritty of the deal, there's probably a number of legal entities (corporations, trusts, LLCs, etc.) involved in the "ownership transfer" that make Don Jr. the legal owner, while allowing Trump to maintain control and entitle him to at least a portion of the income for as long as he's alive.
That's how this kind of thing typically goes. Well, either that or it's all held in a trust from the get go (the smarter way of doing it) that way no one technically owns anything, so there's nothing to pass on, and if you set it up right (using a dynasty trust in South Dakota is the best way of doing this, int he USA at least), then you can basically just transfer "beneficial ownership" from parent to child indefinitely without ever having to worry about the estate tax.
EDIT: Upon reading the actual article, and the comments, I realize this is a liberal rag where there's maybe 1.5 brain cells to rub together across the entire reader base. So, I'm honestly doubting the authenticity of this. Besides that, their "source" for all of this is zillow. Which isn't exactly a credible source of information since they often just say random crap about off market properties that simply isn't true.
I've actually found properties that sold on other realtors websites, like Sotheby for example, that claim they were sold or "taken off the market" for anywhere from 3-5 times the actual selling price, as reported by Sotheby.
So yeah, Zillow isn't exactly the most reputable source, and they're also a bunch of liberal turds anyway, so it's not like they don't also have a bias here. Plus, if this were actually true, not only would it be public record ( you could look up who owns the property in the West Palm Beach Public record), but it would be all over the news in Florida since this would quite literally be the single most expensive real estate transaction for a residential property in the history of the United States.
ON TOP OF THAT, they said Mar-a-Lago is a little over 5,600 Square Feet. This is false. The property is 65,000 Square Feet.
So yeah, this reeks of bullcrap, the more I look into it.
I mean, this isn't THAT odd. The man is in his 70s, he's probably just started the process of transferring his assets to his children so as to avoid estate taxes.
If I were to hazard a guess, if you had access to the nitty gritty of the deal, there's probably a number of legal entities (corporations, trusts, LLCs, etc.) involved in the "ownership transfer" that make Don Jr. the legal owner, while allowing Trump to maintain control and entitle him to at least a portion of the income for as long as he's alive.
That's how this kind of thing typically goes. Well, either that or it's all held in a trust from the get go (the smarter way of doing it) that way no one technically owns anything, so there's nothing to pass on, and if you set it up right (using a dynasty trust in South Dakota is the best way of doing this, int he USA at least), then you can basically just transfer "beneficial ownership" from parent to child indefinitely without ever having to worry about the estate tax.