In a nutshell, Asset Planning incorporates being proactive through arranging legal actions to protect your assets from creditors, judgments, Lawsuits, or an unforeseen divorce. Asset Protection includes steps devised through a professional and legal examination of a client’s financial, personal assets, risks, and overall goals. Legal counsel will strategize which legal tools would best be employed to keep assets protected from seizure.
What Could Threaten One’s Assets?
Threats can come in many forms, such as negligence, vehicular accidents, contract disputes, partner disputes, personal injury, and the inability to meet financial obligations. Businesses can have their assets threatened through claims of harassment, accidents upon business property, automobile accidents, and professional malpractice claims.
Do I Need An Asset Protection Plan?
If you have something of value at risk of being lost if one of the above happens, YOU need a plan to protect your assets. Most clients are mistaken that asset protection is only for the wealthy, yet if a judgment is set forth in the amount of $350,000. It would be modest to a millionaire but life-altering to a family with a modest home, savings, and income. Therefore, both should consider speaking with an attorney well versed in estate planning and asset protection plans.
What Is the Benefit?
Asset Protection Plans that are set-up right can help place a legal shield of protection around your asset that creditors and legal opponents recognize as unreachable to judgments. Putting the debtor (YOU) in a better position for negotiating should a lawsuit be filed.
Lawsuit Avoidance
Protection planning moves the target off your personal assets making lawsuits less likely because there’s less to lose. Lawsuits and litigation are expensive resolutions, and the only true winners are the lawyers. That is why preventing a lawsuit is more adventitious than winning a lawsuit, and asset planning can be crucial in doing just that.
Types of Planning Used
While asset planning can be broad in scope, it starts small, by one carrying insurance protections. It then broadens into looking at legal tools that deepen the protection of one’s assets by analyzing the client’s needs, risks, and comfort level. Often these tools used consist of trusts, limited liability companies, and limited family partnerships. However, there is no one set of actions to be taken, and often, asset protection can encompass a multitude of steps. When starting a protection plan, one should take the time to evaluate their assets and interview attorneys who have expertise in their state’s legal Asset Planning Tools that are available. At Dean Law, we pride ourselves in supplying you with the highest quality legal services so that you can have peace of mind that all legal avenues will be sought to protect your assets because we understand how hard you worked to obtain them.
