More significantly, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed a similar issue to the issue before us today in Richardson v. Klaesson, 210 F.3d 811 (2000). In Richardson, a case relied upon by both parties, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals considered whether the property owned by a trust was a homestead and, therefore, exempt from execution. In answering the question in the negative, the Eighth Circuit stated that [t]he Klaessons occupy the real property in which they claim a homestead exemption as a residence, but the fee-simple title to it is held in trust by the trustees of the Klaesson Family Trust. The Klaessons are among the trustees of the trust, but they are not beneficiaries of it, and, although they were its settlors, they did not retain any reversionary interest in 3) (<HOLDING>). Thus, we hold that a married person with a
holding despite contrary authority that husband debtor with a mere possessoiy interest was not entitled to claim a homestead exemption and stating it is a fundamental tenet of the law of exemptions that the debtor must have an ownership interest in the property before an exemption may be claimed a long line of illinois cases has required that a debtor have title or some ownership interest in property in order to claim a homestead exemption other courts deciding the issue under the federal exemption scheme have held that the key word is interest and that an interest in real property up to a specified amount implies a monetary interest more than just one spouses right to reside with the other holding that even if divorced wife only owned a beneficial interest and not title interest in the residence constituting her homestead she was nonetheless entitled to claim a homestead exemption from the forced sale of the property holding that debtor as grantor and trustee of a trust that held legal title to the property held a sufficient equitable interest in the property to claim it as exempt homestead where she resided on the property prepetition with the intent to maintain it as her primary residence holding that a wife could claim a homestead exemption even though she only had a beneficiary interest in the property held in trust holding that the property held by the revocable trust in which the trustee was the beneficiary and the property was his permanent residence was a constitutionally protected homestead property