A lifetime of hard work and careful savings can be gone in the blink of an eye. It is in your and your family’s best interests if there is a barrier between your assets and creditor claims and lawsuits, both of which have the potential to significantly drain your wealth during your lifetime. The attorneys at Strategic Counsel Law Group, L.C. provide tried and trusted, as well as innovative methods, to protect our client’s hard-earned assets through careful asset protection planning and estate planning.
What is Asset Protection?
Asset protection is a term used to describe the broad goal of preserving your wealth through the use of trusts, business entities, and partnerships. By legally insulating one’s assets (as opposed to illegally hiding funds offshore), you make it more difficult for creditors and other parties to locate or confiscate your assets. Asset protection can be used to shield your wealth from taxes, creditors, and lawsuits, and is an important part of estate planning for individuals of all ages and incomes.
Asset Protection Methods
There are many legal tools that can be used to shield one’s real estate, investments, and liquid assets from creditor’s claims and lawsuits. Below are a few of the most useful tools used in asset protection and estate planning:
- Retirement Accounts—By placing your assets in 401(k) accounts or roth accounts, creditors are unable to touch most of these assets.
- Life Insurance—Life insurance funds are off limits to creditors.
- Tenants By Entirety—If you or your spouse owe one another a debt, tenancy by entirety may be used to protect assets from creditors.
- Annuities—Assets within annuities are exempt from creditors.
- Offshore Protection Trusts—Legally moving money offshore is one of the most secure ways to protect your assets.
- Irrevocable Trusts—An irrevocable trust takes the assets you fund the trust with out of your hands, placing them in the trust to be managed by the trustee. As such, you technically no longer own these assets.
- Homestead Protection—Homestead protection is a method to protect assets from creditors, except in bankruptcy claims.
- Land Trust—Real property placed in a land trust makes it more difficult for creditors to locate your assets.
- Family Limited Liability Company (LLC)—A family limited liability company is formed by blood-family members, and can be used to shield assets from creditors.
- Family Limited Partnership (FLP)—An FLP is a holding company for assets, and can be used with other asset protection tools to shield your wealth from creditors.
Our Asset Protection Attorneys Are Just a Phone Call Away
Asset protection looks different for Party A than it does for Party B, because people’s assets differ. While creating an irrevocable trust may be of benefit to one person, another may be better off by investing in retirement accounts and placing funds in annuities. Asset protection is not one-size-fits-all; it needs to be catered to the client’s specific needs. Here at Strategic Counsel Law Group, L.C., we do just that. Contact an asset protection attorney today at 813-286-1700 to schedule a free consultation.
