What is Asset Protection?
For the past several years asset protection has been one of the fastest growing areas of law. It is also one of the most controversial – the goal of asset protection is to shield assets from the reach of creditors.
Asset protection should simply be about structuring the ownership of one’s assets to safeguard them from potential future risks. Most asset protection structures are commonly used business and estate planning tools, such as limited liability companies, family limited partnerships, trusts and the like. Properly implemented asset protection planning should be legal and ethical. It should not be based on hiding assets or on secrecy. It is not a means or an excuse to avoid or evade U. S. taxes.
There is no one “magic bullet” in asset protection. The term “asset protection” encompasses a number of planning and structuring mechanisms that may be implemented by a practitioner to minimize a client’s exposure to risk. For each client the asset protection solution will be different, depending on (i) the identity of the debtor; (ii) the nature of the claim; (iii) the identity of the creditor; and (iv) the nature of the assets. These are four threshold factors that are either expressly or implicitly analyzed in each asset protection case. The analysis of these four factors determines what planning would be possible and effective for a specific client.
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Jacob Stein, Esq. is Managing Partner at Aliant, LLP. He specializes in structuring international business transactions, complex U.S. and international tax planning and asset protection planning.
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