Parkin Son

Archive for March, 2009

A variety of strategies could provide some degree of psychological or legal security to those who own properties. No razzle-dazzle approach is needed. A simplified but integrated plan will achieve the same goal of protecting your assets. The choice of the right legal entity or structure is crucial. No plaintiff with a working brain will initiate a lawsuit if the prospects of recovery are inadequate or nil. Keeping your properties out of your name and technical control by creating limited partnerships, trusts and corporations is just one asset protection technique. Other strategies and game plans include dealing in cash, valuable chattels and bearer investments (such as jewelry, stamps, antiques, collectibles, gold bullion and other precious metals), spreading your properties, opening offshore bank accounts and trusts (such as the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the Cook Islands, etc.), maximizing properties that are exempted from execution or collection (such a homestead or family home), getting a team that will keep your confidences and secrets, encumbering your assets to make them less attractive to predators, and buying insurance and annuities. Experts suggest that you must keep your creditors out of touch with each other so as not to help them gang up on you. The absence of a paper trail will make properties difficult to track down. The proper titling of your real estate properties will make tracing cumbersome and expensive for property hounds. Extreme measures such as declaring bankruptcy or insolvency and giving away your assets to others are more ways to give you a fresh start and to help you retain some of your assets.
Confidentiality is the central theme in asset protection law. Leaks about the ownership of your properties will provide tracks for predators to follow. Other experts state that the surest asset protection is to move your assets out of reach of the local courts and execute a durable power of attorney to make sure that someone you trust completely has access to these assets if you become incapacitated.