About Asset Protection Law
When you spend a lifetime building your assets, you need a plan that works hard to preserve your wealth. The concept of shielding and defending your assets isn’t just an idea for high-net-worth individuals and families. You need an asset protection plan in place if you’re a business owner, a retiree, or a high-profile professional such as a doctor or attorney. You may also require a protection plan if your home, stocks, or other financial holdings have gained significant value over time.
Asset protection attorneys use agreements, financial instruments, and legal arrangements to control the financial risks that can deplete your assets. The process requires in-depth knowledge of complex laws and regulations. They understand the legal and financial intricacies of property, taxes, estate planning, trusts, family law, legal liabilities, Wills, and many other issues.
Asset Protection Planning
Asset protection is a planning, management, and monitoring process. Asset protection attorneys evaluate your assets, consider how adverse occurrences will affect them and put protections in place based on your personal and business needs and requirements.
Commercial Protection
You must protect your business assets whether it’s a brick and mortar specialty shop, a manufacturing plant, or an online marketing enterprise. A single injured person can instigate a court battle that threatens your business’s financial stability. A natural disaster can destroy your property and operations, leaving you with no means to meet your financial commitments.
Asset protection attorneys recognize the potential for such business dynamics. They work with you to implement strategies that protect your company’s assets from the moment you register your trade name.
- Limited Liability Company: When you establish your business as an LLC, it becomes an entity that’s completely separate from you. It sets up a barrier that protects your personal assets from commercial liabilities, debts, and judgments.
- Corporation: Personal and stockholder protection from corporate losses is one of the primary benefits of structuring your company as a corporation. Certain corporations provide tax advantages.
- Company Origin: Regardless of your physical location, your attorney can establish your company so that it originates from a remote or offshore location with greater company protections.
- Insurance and Bond Programs: Attorneys recommend insurance and bond coverages to protect your company from losses due to asset destruction, customer injuries, defense costs, court judgments, excess liability exposures, and performance penalties.
Personal Protection
Your need for asset protection is just as critical in your personal life. It’s particularly important when you’re concerned about guarding your assets against losses due to tax liabilities, medical liens, creditor judgments, liability losses, and other financially draining processes. As with business asset protection, attorneys personalize your plan to meet your specific needs.
- Prenuptial Agreements establish clear divisions between your assets and your future spouse’s assets. Attorneys draft and execute agreements that prevent previously acquired assets from inclusion as community assets if a divorce occurs.
- Asset Protection Trusts protect your personal assets from debtors. An independent trustee handles disbursements and arranges to pay debts to minimize the potential for legal action against you or your estate.
- Wills prevent probate courts from determining how to distribute your assets after your death. A will also prevents losses due to excessive legal fees.
- Beneficiary Designations determine who receives the proceeds from a retirement plan distribution or life insurance policy. An attorney can review your plans and policies to make sure they name your preferred beneficiaries.
Contact an Asset Protection Attorney
Asset protection attorneys work with you to implement protections that guard your assets against known and potential risks. Without the appropriate legal protections in place, a single unanticipated event can cause a life-changing financial shift. It can destroy what you’ve worked so hard to accomplish.