Five Things You May Not Know About Asset Protection Strategies

By Julie Fielder
Attorney

You may not believe that you need asset planning right now; however, once you realize you need to protect your assets, it may be too late to do so. Our California asset protection lawyers utilize a variety of asset planning strategies to help our clients protect assets, including real estate, inheritance, liquid assets, personal property, and lawsuit settlements. We want to help you prevent a situation that could substantially decrease your wealth and cause a financial hardship.

Five Important Things You Need to Know About Asset Planning

1. Asset Protection Is Not Limited to Wealthy Individuals – Asset protection planning can benefit many different people and entities. Property owners, businesses, parents of teenage drivers, professionals, administrators of estates, and trustees can benefit from asset protection strategies. If you own any assets or you are responsible for managing the assets of a company, trust, or estate, you can benefit from the tools and strategies employed in asset protection planning.

2. Early implementation of an asset protection plan can avoid the appearance of fraudulent transfers – If you wait until after a creditor files a lawsuit, your relative is mentally incapacitated, or you need long-term care, it may be too late to transfer assets to a trust or another person to protect those assets. Therefore, it is important to work with our California asset protection lawyers now to determine the best asset planning strategies to use to provide you with the highest level of asset protection.

3. The reason you need asset protection planning could impact the strategies you use to protect your assets – If you are trying to protect your assets from the government, a spouse, your creditors, or family members, you may need to utilize different strategies to protect assets. A skilled asset protection attorney can review the options and strategies for protecting assets and help you choose the strategies that work with your goals and needs.

4. The assets you are protecting can also impact the asset protection strategies you use – The types of assets to be protected can impact the choice of asset protect strategies. For example, let’s assume you choose to use a revocable living trust or another type of trust agreement to protect some assets. However, some assets cannot be transferred to a trust. Therefore, you must employ another strategy for protecting those assets.

5. Jointly titled property and joint accounts can present a serious issue when engaging in asset protection planning -When you have joint assets and joint accounts, the assets are subject to the liabilities and risks associated with the joint owner. Because assets in a joint account are co-mingled when they are deposited into the account, it can be impossible to protect any of those funds from creditors of the joint owner. Likewise, the full value of other assets that are jointly owned, such as real estate and personal property, may be at risk.

You should review jointly owned property with our California asset protection lawyers to determine if any asset protection strategies may protect your interest in the jointly property.

California Asset Protection Lawyers

Protecting your assets is one of the top priorities when you own a business, or you are planning for your retirement, death, or incapacitation. However, asset protection planning should be a high priority for everyone. Our