Mooresville, North Carolina Asset Protection Attorneys
Asset Protection Panning
We live in a law-suit crazy, financially risky world; one where people unexpectedly lose their assets. More families, individuals and businesses get sued or go bankrupt each year. It can happen to anyone! That's why so many people today are anxious to protect their wealth; they seek financial security and want peace of mind!
Contact Lutzel, Broadway & Associates, for assistance.
Asset protection is a strategy to title your savings, property, business, and other assets to shield them from lawsuits and other claims. Asset protection prevents your adversaries from seizing your wealth.
Many Americans consider their home their most valuable and vulnerable asset. Certainly, it's the one asset for which they have the most concern when they are sued because they are most emotionally attached to their home. The home is also vulnerable to lawsuits because it's usually titled personally to their owners. Personal ownership may be necessary for conventional home financing and to claim the federal capital gains tax benefits, homestead protection, and real estate tax abatements available to seniors.
Successful wealth protection doesn't just happen. Whether you can effectively blockade litigants and creditors from grabbing your assets depends on 'ifs'.
- if you protect yourself before trouble strikes.
- if you use the right strategies and tools for your particular situation.
- if you have a legal advisor with the necessary skills to build your best fortress.
- if you as enthusiastically shelter your wealth as you generated your wealth.
Asset protection is a safety net. It doesn't guarantee that you won't get sued or run into other financial calamities; but if you do, you will lose fewer assets. Otherwise you're in 'free-fall,' vulnerable and exposed. Your lawyer may fight to defend you against a lawsuit, but your lawyer probably won't tell you to shelter yourself in the event they lose your lawsuit. That's something you must know!
Your attorney must apply the complete arsenal of protective firewalls. Anything less reduces your options and weakens your safety net. Customize your right plan. To do so, your planner must consider many important factors unique to you and your situation:
- your state laws
- the specific assets you must protect; and their value
- what liability (if any) you need protection against
- whether you are in the preventative or crisis planning stage
- your financial (estate planning, investment and tax) situation
- the strategies that you would be most comfortable adopting
- costs
- your personal situation (age, marital status, etc.)
Asset protection must do more than protect your assets from creditors. It is equally important for the plan to contain liability or insulate you personally from business and other external liabilities and limit creditors to one (or the fewest number of entities). Essentially, this strategy deploys assets in different baskets so a creditor can target the least amount of assets. For example, a plan that shelters a business owner's personal assets is incomplete unless the plan simultaneously contains or limits creditors to the assets of the specific business entities.
Everything else is meaningless if your plan fails to achieve its primary purpose - to protect your assets. No planner can guarantee the absolute safety of their plan (and you should be wary of any planner who does); however, you want at least reasonable certainty that your assets can sustain a creditor attack, should it occur. Ultimately, you want your assets as close to 100 percent lawsuit-proof as legally possible. Anything less is not a great plan.
