The Law Offices of Ido Stern » Business Practice

Asset Protection Planning

In today's increasingly litigious society business owners and high net worth individuals need asset protection as a legal barrier which protects your hard earned wealth from creditors or harmful lawsuits. The purpose of asset protection is to deter lawsuits, protect your assets from creditors, or provide leverage to negotiate favorable settlements with judgment creditors. Asset protection plans work, but are generally much more effective for individuals or businesses who have had the foresight to establish a plan well in advance of the filing of a lawsuit. As such, asset protection should be thought of as proactive planning.

Asset protection planning enables you to employ legal techniques to prevent a future creditor from seizing your assets and income. Your degree of exposure to risk of liability, the type of assets you own your income, and your total net worth are essential factors that must be considered in developing a strategy for asset protection. Proper asset protection planning requires client information to tailor the plan to provide the most effective plan possible. We carefully evaluate all of all client's relevant information and goals to devise the best possible asset protection plan. Our techniques are carefully formulated to lawfully shelter our client's assets and income from their potential creditors. However, our techniques do not involve "hiding" assets or making illegal transfers to defraud creditors. Our techniques are significantly more complicated than simply advising our clients to put all their assets into a limited liability company.

Most of our asset protection plans involve multiple layers of entities that provide our clients with layers of trusts, partnerships, and limited liability companies. In certain limited circumstances our asset protection plans utilize foreign asset protection trusts and foreign limited liability companies. Legal asset protection is also available to protect your income and assets from potential judgment creditors that have not even materialized yet.