In the time it takes to "snap" your fingers, you could lose everything. It’s truly a shame that most people spend more time working on their golf game than they do their asset protection plan.

Did you know that during his or her lifetime, the average person will spend about 90,000 hours working hard to provide for his or her family and to accumulate wealth. During this 45 year period of time, this same individual will spend less than an average of 3 hours planning and taking steps to protect his or her hard earned assets. The truth of the matter is that more people spend time on the golf course working on their swing than they do planning their estate and protecting their assets.

The American Legal System- Our lawyers enjoy the challenge of taking cases to trial and since 1986, we've litigated thousands of cases. Without any reservation whatsoever, we believe and can comfortably report that our legal system is by far, the finest in the world.

Are there problems with our legal system? Sure. Do judges and juries always get it right? No. Do the high profile cases you read about in the paper with sensationalized ridiculous outcomes reflect what is really going on in our courtrooms across America? Not even close.

There’s good reason why an "interesting" case makes the news or local paper. It sells commercial time and newspapers. Get rid of the well-publicized case with the unusual or unexpected outcome and when it is all said and done, we believe the checks and balances of our civil and criminal legal system are substantially better than any other system in the world.

That being said, how comfortable would you be facing a jury of your peers in a serious criminal case? What about a civil trial with millions of dollars on the line?

Why Everyone Needs Personal, Business, Estate and Asset Protection Planning

Smart decisions made prior to or early in a dispute can help you avoid a majority of all claims which expose your assets to collection. We honestly believe that in the thousands of cases we handled over the past 21+ years, defendants could have avoided time-consuming and expensive litigation if they had simply sought the advice of experienced legal counsel before making an important personal or business decision. When defending these people during litigation and trial, a great majority of our time is spent on "damage control" and minimizing the damages our clients could have easily avoided.

Getting good legal advice right off the bat is one of the most effective asset protection tools available.

Asset protection is a process of lawfully and ethically owning, managing and controlling personal and business assets to protect them from creditor attack.  It is an ongoing interdisciplinary effort which, depending on the unique needs of each individual client, may involve the application and conflict-of-law analysis of established and anticipated state, federal and international law, estate planning law, debtor-creditor law, real property law, contract law, bankruptcy law, corporate law, partnership law, trust law, family law, pension plan law, social security law, criminal law, civil procedure law, civil code law, evidence law, Medicare law and Medicaid law.

Proper asset protection planning should include lowering the asset profile of individuals and businesses to not only discourage frivolous lawsuits, but to also shield assets from criminal activity. Effective asset protection planning will segregate and insulate assets from future liabilities and with proactive pre-litigation planning, will substantially minimize or reduce a client’s exposure to claims, lawsuits and judgments. Because of the above-described complexity and, the very important attorney work-product and attorney-client privileges, qualified and experienced legal counsel is necessary to plan, implement and maintain on an ongoing basis, a lawful and effective asset protection plan.

As referenced above and evidenced by common sense, equity and a rapidly expanding line of court cases, a proper and effective asset protection plan should never be designed around secrecy, hiding assets, defrauding creditors, laundering money, avoiding the disclosure or reporting of income or, to evade taxes. State and federal judges will not, and should not, tolerate fraudulent conduct. Assets fraudulently transferred will be ordered returned and debtors failing to comply with the court’s order may very well be jailed for contempt.

Without disclosing all of our approaches to the general public, here is a partial list of commonly utilized asset protection tools which are normally combined together to solve the needs of our clients:

Revocable Trust (Living Trust) and Wills
Family Limited Partnerships
Ancillary Documents (pourover wills, powers of attorney, property agreements)
Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
Irrevocable Trusts
Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts
International Asset Protection Trust and Entities
Domestic Asset Protection Trust and Entities
Gifting Trusts
Ancillary Documents (client portfolios, Crummey notifications, letters of instruction)
Exemption Planning
ERISA Retirement Plans
Pre and Post Marriage Property Title Agreements
Insurance
Charitable Remainder Trusts
Charitable Lead Trusts
Private Foundations
Testamentary Charitable Distributions
Ancillary Documents (client portfolios, letters of instruction)
Qualified Personal Residence Trusts
Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts and Unitrusts
Grantor Retained Income Trusts
Wills with and without tax planning
Ancillary documents
Conduit Trusts
Individual Special Needs Trusts
Joint Special Needs Trusts
Memo of Intent Guidelines
Retirement Trusts
IRA Master Beneficiary Designation
Qualified Plan Master Beneficiary Designation
Beneficiary Designation Inserts
FLLC formation documents
Funding and Transfer Documents

With the above in mind, the key to a legal and effective asset protection plan is to take proper action well before there is a claim. To be proactive and take steps to plan and coordinate an effective estate and asset protection plan to protect your assets while you are alive, and to make sure your assets are properly transferred to your heirs after you are gone.

We are experienced attorneys who help clients understand, plan, implement and manage their asset protection plans. In this article, we’ve shared our thoughts and concerns about the need for proper asset planning and protection.

Frankly, too many people contact us for the first time only after a claim has arisen or lawsuit filed. By this time, it’s too late for effective asset protection planning (although depending on the nature and amount of the claim, there still may be several important things we can do to protect a majority of your assets). Without exception, if these same people had contacted us before a claim or lawsuit occurred, we could have saved them a great deal of time, expense and mental anguish.