Asset Protection
and Estate Planning
Doug Shaddix, Attorney At Law
Call Us For A Free 20 Minute Consultation
Asset Protection
and Estate Planning
Doug Shaddix, Attorney At Law
Call Us For A Free 20 Minute Consultation
We will set up your Limited Liability Company, Corporation, Family Limited Partnership, and/or Trust. We specialize in helping clients maximize their privacy, minimize their tax burden, and avoid probate, by utilizing trusts and entities
that assist you in your . . .
If you have significant assets of any type, you are a target for a lawsuit. You need to know more about legally protecting your assets. Enjoy greater privacy, limits on your personal liability, as well as tax benefits using entities such as LLC’s, corporations and trusts.
In today’s litigious society, you need only one person unhappy with your business, one injured tenant, one disgruntled individual to ruin all that you have worked for by going to a plaintiff’s lawyer to see how they can get to everything you own. If you are sued, you could lose your business, its equipment, and vehicles, your personal automobiles, your home, your rental properties . . . anything that you own in your own name.
Are you in a General Partnership?
Are you a Sole Proprietor?
Do you own rental properties in your own name?
If so, you could have severe liability exposure.
Maximize your privacy, keep your name off of the public records. Minimize your tax liability.
Protect your assets by transferring wealth to your heirs without the government taking more than 50 percent through estate, inheritance and other taxes.
Protection from probate – a great help in estate planning, and a great comfort and benefit to your heirs – who may otherwise unwittingly squander thousands through Probate Attorneys after your death. The national average for Probate Attorneys is 10% of the value of the estate!
Protection from lawsuits – If you have significant assets you are a target for a lawsuit. Unfortunately for those doing business today, it’s probably not a matter of IF you will be sued, it’s WHEN.
“Own Nothing, Control Everything.”
- John D. Rockefeller
In providing legal shields to protect you against lawsuits, Asset Shields, LLC uses a variety of legal entities that transfer your assets to a trust or company that will provide you with legal liability limits and personal protections in the event of a lawsuit.
The most basic component of asset protection is in removing all assets from your personal name and out of the public eye. No longer are your rental properties or other assets owned on the public record in your own name. An "S" or an "C" corporation, a Limited Liability Company (LLC), a Family Limited Partnership (FLP) or other entity will now own the asset instead; but you control it.
Asset Shields forms corporations, LLC's, trusts and other entities to provide Asset Protection to our clients.
Under the "What We Do For You" tab above, you will find a helpful description of each of these estate planning tools;
Basic Estate Planning Documents
Types of Trusts
Useful Entities for Asset Protection
Other Types of Useful Agreements to Consider
Asset Shields will be happy to draft a Last Will and Testament to meet your family needs, but . . .
A Will guarantees probate. A Trust avoids it. A trust allows you to pass your assets to your heirs without the pain, delay and expense of probate and the burden of inheritance taxes.
If your heirs are scattered around the country or the world, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got deep pockets or not, you need a trust. Your heirs are not going to put schooling or their life on hold to come back to your town and spend 6 months probating your estate. They are going to hire a probate attorney. A probate attorney will eat up an average of 10% of the value of the estate. Ten percent of your business, 10% of your wife’s business, 10% of the sales price of your personal residence – not the profit, the total sales price – ten percent of the sales price for your rental properties, etc., plus your heirs are already paying the real estate agent 10%, (+/-).
If my business sells for $100,000 that’s $10,000 to the Probate Attorney, if my wife’s business sells for $100,000 that’s $10,000 more, if they sell my home for $300,000 that’s $30,000 more. That’s $50,000 to the Probate Attorney and they haven’t even got to the LLCs that hold your rental properties yet or even called to cancel the Visa card – the very thing you expected them to do. So, tens of thousands of dollars that you thought was going to your heirs just went out the window.
THAT’S NOT VERY GOOD ASSET PROTECTION IS IT?
A Revocable Living Trust will maximize your privacy, minimize your tax burden, avoid probate and help protect you personally from lawsuits.
If you have significant assets, or if you have assets that will appreciate to the amount of the IRS allows for the marital deduction, you need a Revocable Living Trust to shelter your estate from the IRS and estate taxes. (Congress has changed this amount several times in the last 20 years.)
Your estate will double every 10 years. A $300,000 home, a $250,000 life insurance policy, a rental home, and ten years of appreciation put your assets high above what you may envision. You may pass a heavy tax burden on to your heirs. The inheritance tax starts at 55%. The government will confiscate MORE than one half of what your heirs should have kept as their own.
Humorous Estate Planning Story
Tom was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. When he found out that he was going to inherit a fortune when his ailing father passed away, he decided that it was time to seek a wife with which to share his riches.
One evening at an event he spotted the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away. “I may look like just an ordinary guy,” he said to her, “but in just a few months my father will die and I will inherit $20 million dollars.”
Impressed, the woman accepted his business card. Three weeks later she became his stepmother.
"Women Are So Much Better At Estate Planning Than Men."
~ Author Unknown
Other documents that you need in order to complete your estate planning and protect your assets, are Powers of Attorney. If you are in an auto wreck and go into a coma, you need an Advance Directive for Health Care to guarantee that the one you trust most makes the decisions regarding your health care.
This document will tell loved ones and medical providers what your desires are regarding hydration and nutrition in the event that you are ever in a "persistent vegetative state." It is in this document that you specify whether you want all measures taken to prolong life, or, “do not resuscitate.”
An Advance Directive helps avoid the type of high-profile problem situation that occurred some years ago in Florida with a woman named Terri Schiavo. Her parents held her Power of Attorney for Health Care, while her husband held her “Living Will”. Major national headlines chronicled the battle over who had the operative document.
In most states, the Living Will has now been combined with a Power of Attorney for Health Care and is now called an Advance Directive.
Some prefer a document called a "Will to Live". This is essentially a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care that spells out what efforts you want taken on your behalf in order to keep you alive. A Will to Live is available for each individual state at https://www.nrlc.org/medethics/willtolive
If you do nothing else at all, do your heirs a huge favor and at least get an Advance Directive for Health Care. No one wants to “pull the plug on Momma”, so make it easier on them and have an Advance Directive that tells them what you want – “Do not resuscitate”, “Take every measure possible to prolong life”, or “Give me painkillers and hydration, but don’t take any extraordinary measures to prolong life; allow natural death to occur.”
The other basic Estate Planning necessity is a Durable General Power of Attorney (or a Durable Power of Attorney for Assets), to designate who will run your business or financial affairs in the event that you are incapacitated.
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