Principles of Asset Protection Planning Part 1 of 3

It is just common sense that the plan you come up with needs to encompass all the assets that you have, but you find many people missing out on some assets. They only include a few that they deem necessary and leave the rest exposed to threats.

For many people, intangible assets aren’t of such significant value compared to their tangible counterparts. Additionally, at times you might feel that some assets are protected when in the real sense, they are fully exposed.

Never assume that an asset is protected until you confirm the protection status.

Many people only protect their personal assets and ignore other categories. If you have an office or a business, you need to make sure all are protected.
As a New York asset protection attorney will tell you, lawsuits can be brought against any asset – personal or business-related. So, try and ensure all are under protection.

You cannot have a single plan that will protect against all threats. For instance, a plan that protects against creditors might not work the same way against divorce.

To this end, you need a plan that protects the assets against known threats, or the ones that might happen at any time. After this, try and predict upcoming future troubles.

So, you need to begin with a basic plan then build on it as you forecast upcoming issues. This means that the plan needs to be flexible and allow for modifications. When choosing a plan, try and understand the provisions as well as the limitations. This way, you can modify the plan as you see necessary.

Structure your plan knowing too well that you don’t have a standard plaintiff. It is always good to overestimate what a plaintiff can do and plan bigger rather than planning smaller.

Flexibility is also ideal because your personal and professional situation changes with time. It is, therefore, a good idea to update the plan annually so that you take into consideration your situational changes.

Additionally, the protection plans keep on changing, the reason why you need to upgrade the plan as needed.

If a threat comes and you handle it properly, it is advisable to get back to the basic plan. This is because it is costly to maintain extra components that aren’t useful anymore.

When you speak to your asset protection attorney, he will emphasize one thing – you need a modular plan that you can add, delete, and change the components faster.

A few years ago, the legality of asset protection was a question that most lawyers questioned. This has changed, and at the moment, the process has been streamlined and is entirely legal. Try to make yours as legitimate as it needs to be.

This is why you need to work with an asset protection attorney at all stages of asset planning. The planner needs to make sure that the strategy doesn’t conceal assets fraudulently or that you implement a plan which will make you violate laws or commit perjury, money laundering or defraud your creditors.

A good asset protection plan needs to offer legal protection, rather than putting you and the planner in trouble. If you realize that there is something about the strategy you aren’t comfortable with, seek the advice of a qualified asset protection lawyer. The good thing is that you have many legal options to shield your assets from threats without having to resort to fraudulent measures that can land you in trouble.

Your planner might advise you to conceal some financial dealings to avoid protecting them. This is a bad idea that might land you in trouble. The standard way is to use offshore accounts instead of concealing them.

The world is digitized, and virtually any transaction that you make will end up being uncovered.

In the first part of the series, we have looked at a few principles of asset protection you must follow. The bottom-line is that if you feel something isn’t going right, talk to an asset protection attorney to help make things clear for you.