Asset Pro­tec­tion

We have found that clients from all walks of life are con­cerned about asset pro­tec­tion.  How­ever, there are a few pro­fes­sions that are exposed to more risk than oth­ers.  For exam­ple, pro­fes­sions such as (1) law, (2) med­i­cine, (3) den­tistry, (4) archi­tec­ture, (5) accoun­tancy, (6) engi­neer­ing and (7) prop­erty construction/development fall into the “high-risk” area where a work-related law­suit may be filed.  If suc­cess­ful, these law­suits can reach into your per­sonal finances and dev­as­tate what you’ve earned over the years. In addi­tion, if you own and oper­ate cer­tain classes of assets, like rental prop­erty or com­mer­cial vehi­cles, you are also at a higher-than-normal risk for a law­suit that could impact your per­sonal assets.

Most folks are unaware that a sin­gle law­suit, even a base­less one, can threaten what you’ve worked your entire life to save and grow.  If this kind of law­suit wiped you out, could you start over?

Most peo­ple can’t.  If this is you, you should take steps to limit your lia­bil­ity and pro­tect what you’ve worked so hard to cre­ate, at home as well as in your business.

By care­fully craft­ing a strat­egy that max­i­mizes pro­tec­tion and flex­i­bil­ity, we can help you keep your assets away from future law­suit cred­i­tors.  This type of advanced estate plan­ning can act like an addi­tional layer of insur­ance, but with sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages over an insur­ance policy.

Unlike an insur­ance pol­icy, which may not cover inten­tional acts or the puni­tive dam­ages result­ing from a law­suit, the kind of asset pro­tec­tion we will help you put in place won’t have claim lim­its or pol­icy exclu­sions.  While no plan is a magic bul­let, our plan­ning focuses on build­ing as many walls and lay­ers around your assets as pos­si­ble, which would help dis­suade cred­i­tors from try­ing to attack them.

It’s never too early to start pro­tect­ing what you hold most valu­able.  It can, how­ever, become too late to engage in asset pro­tec­tion.  If you trans­fer assets to avoid lia­bil­ity from an act that has already occurred (whether or not a law­suit has been filed), such trans­fers might be regarded as hav­ing been done to defraud cred­i­tors, in which case, they will not be honored.

In other words, the time to do asset plan­ning is before there is a chance for a claim, as part of a com­pre­hen­sive estate plan.  Call our office to sched­ule a no-cost, con­fi­den­tial assess­ment of your risk.