In Forbes article, Ashlea Ebeling describes the benefits of domestic asset protection trusts

On July 21, 2010, Forbes.com published You Don't Have To Move Your Money Offshore To Get Asset Protection, by Ashlea Ebeling.  This article is very informative.  It describes the benefits that domestic asset protection trusts have over offshore asset protection trusts:

Forget about hiding money offshore from the Internal Revenue Service--unless you want to risk the penalties, back tax bills and threat of prosecution that thousands of American clients of ubs now face. But what about protecting your cash from vexatious litigants, a grasping ex-spouse or pesky creditors? Then offshore trusts are still an option, but a far less attractive one now that legal reporting requirements for offshore holdings have become more onerous and some U.S. judges have taken to jailing folks who won't (or can't) turn over offshore assets.

That's good news for the lawyers and bankers promoting domestic asset protection trusts instead.

This article provides a chart that lists the twelve states that allow the use of asset protection trusts to shield money from some creditors.  Further, in an interactive series of pictures, Las Vegas attorney Steven Oshins ranks these sates from A+ (the most asset protection) to D. 

The headings in the article highlight its usefulness:

• Do you even need a trust?
• What assets do you want to hold?
• Are you already being sued?

Here are some of my notes from this article:

Asset protection for middle class clients (and beyond):

1.    insurance

2.    LLCs

3.    retirement accounts

4.    gifting through spendthrift trusts

Asset protection for high net worth individuals:

5.    offshore asset protection trusts

6.    domestic asset protection trusts – provided by 12 states

The article will also appear in Forbes Magazine dated August 9, 2010.  You can get a free trial issue of Forbes Magazine, here.  If you like Forbes, you can get 25 more issues for only $29.99 (a savings of 77% off the newsstand price). 

Comments

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[Hani Sarji]

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Best,

Hani