Joe and all.  To truly understand deeds, mortgage deeds, and deeds of trust, a little bit of history is necessary.  While now and throughout all of the 20th century there is virtually no difference in the effects of a mortgage deed and a deed of trust, that was not how it was across the millennium before the last decades of the 19th century.

Before commercial banks (there were none that we would now recognize before the years mentioned), land was purchased with one's own funds, by what we now call land contracts where we pay the owner till payoff, or by private loan with the money again paid in installments to a lender.  Because we did not trust most sellers to prevent liens and legal damages to come to our land title during the time it took us to pay the debt, and because likewise those sellers did not trust buyers to pay in full and not sell the land to someone else before it was paid off, we devised the deed of trust where the seller executed a deed and put it in the hands of a person trusted and agreed upon by both he and the buyer.  

That person was the Trustee, and when the seller stated (legally) that he had been paid in full, the trustee handed over the deed to the buyer and everyone went happily about their business.  When commercial banks undertook to loan to everyone, they could dictate the terms and so they demanded a mortgage deed made to them by the buyer, it again revealing the payments schedule, etc., and was held by the bank instead.  When they got their money - as now - they released the mortgage deed back to the buyer, and again all were happy.  

While some states still use deeds of trust, the trustee is very often the bank's mortgage holding subdivision or some other business entity selected by that bank.  In such cases, the buyer has nothing to say about who holds the mortgage or the trust deed.  If you don't like the banks choices and methods, they simply will tell you to hit the road to some other lender.       
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Joe H. Drake 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 4:50 PM
  Subject: [DRAKE] Trustees


  Hello Everybody,

  .... Does anyone understand what the function and purpose of the trustee (in a Deed of Trust) was?  Generally, these deeds of trust are to cover a debt of some type.
  More often than not the debt involves something other than the purchase of land, but usually, land is what the
  deed places a lien on (most deeds of trust today place a lien on the real estate one is buying, not so in the 
  18th and 19th centuries).


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