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We’re proud to annouce we’re giving away a Free PDF eBook version of Ryan Fowler’s crtically acclaimed book “Asset Protection In Financially Unsafe Times”to all complete training members of Assetprotectiontraining.com. The book thoroughly examines asset protection fundamentals as well as cutting-edge asset protection strategies pioneered by Dr. Goldstein and Mr Fowler. They also dispel many of the misconceptions (ex:you don’t have to pay taxes) people have about asset protection, with in-depth case studies, and other examples in easy-to-understand language.
In addition to the book, complete training members can watch video lesson’s that correspond with various chapters from Asset Protection in Financially Unsafe times. These are exclusively available to members or assetprotectiontraining.com.
Video Lessons by Ryan Fowler available to Complete Training students:
Click to read reviews of ‘Asset protection in Financially Unsafe Times’
“I am involved in asset protection implementation everyday and I find this book genius in it timeliness, clarity and level of research. It certainly dispels the myths and urban legends as it shows what clearly works, what doesn’t, why and when to implement certain methods. This is, no doubt, the most cutting edge book on asset protection I have ever read. This is the current text book of asset protection.” T. Costello
Some would say that only the rich are the targets of litigation. Although many people feel their wealth is safe, or not enough for someone to go after via our legal system, this attitude is naïve. Invariably people with this attitude have bought into one or more of the following myths:
While you need not do anything incorrectly to find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit, there are those who believe that because they’ve never been sued before, their chances of being sued in the future are very slim. For example, one of our clients once claimed they’d never be sued because they were merely a schoolteacher. It’s true that this person will probably never be sued for teaching, yet this person was eventually sued for over a million dollars for negligently handling her mother’s estate.
Obviously, a lawsuit need not relate to your employment. You may be cautious and careful and still get sued. Since anyone who drives could get in an accident, which could lead to a large lawsuit well in excess of insurance costs, we all have some risk of being sued at some point in our lives. It is not only doctors, real estate developers, or business owners who incur liability or attract lawsuits; everyone is a potential target.
Professionals, of course, have a higher-risk of being sued than your “average Joe”. When a surgery fails, a trial is lost, or an investment sours, the patient, client, or investor concludes that the professional is to blame. Unfavorable outcomes translate into ‘sue the professional.’ These plaintiffs ‘walk the Yellow Pages’ for a lawyer ready and willing to take the case. Others are also high on the lawsuithit list: parents of teenage drivers, commercial real estate owners, small business owners, accountants and other business advisors, architects and engineers,
corporate officers and directors, directors of charitable organizations, police officers, celebrities, sports figures, and the conspicuously wealthy.
It’s not what you do, but how much you own that determines your vulnerability. Even the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes can get into big legal trouble. For instance, on one occasion an 83-year-old great grandmother accidentally hit the gas rather than the brake and slammed her Lexus through a K-Mart storefront, seriously injuring several shoppers. She was subsequently sued for considerably more than her insurance coverage. This was her first lawsuit in eighty-three years, but she’ll be the first to admit the prospect of losing one’s life savings, even at 83, is extremely unpleasant.
How would you feel if you lost what few assets you do own? Wealth is relative. It is not only the rich and affluent who need asset protection; if you have any assets, they need protection. An example to illustrate this point involves an airport shoe-shiner. He was sued for $100,000 on a bank loan he guaranteed for his son. He owned only his Bronx home with $100,000 equity. To some people, $100,000 is hardly serious
wealth. While they would hate to lose it, such a loss would not hurt their lifestyle. That $100,000 was this man’s entire lifetime accumulation. How many more shoes must he shine to replace his $100,000 nest egg?
Another example is that of a married couple who were small business owners. They were of modest wealth, but nonetheless they decided to be pro-active and do asset protection. A while later they ran into IRS trouble, and subsequently the IRS tried to levy $8,000 from their business account. If the IRS had been successful, the business would have been seriously interrupted. The levy would have cut off
their only source of income and crippled their ability to pay other creditors, which could have caused the business to fail. Fortunately, because the business was an LLC, the IRS was unable to seize the money for the couple’s personal tax problems.
Asset protection allowed the business to run uninterrupted while the tax debt was resolved in a fair and equitable manner. Although in the narrowest sense this planning may have only saved them $8,000, to this married couple the planning’svalue was much, much greater. They were very glad to have paid less than $3,000 to do some simple planning in a timely manner.
We receive calls from people throughout the country who have creditors or lawsuit problems. Many have only a few dollars in the bank, a small house, or perhaps some modest investments. Whatever their wealth, it is precious to them. Protecting their assets is as serious a matter as protecting someone else’s millions. Wealth is relative, and you must treat your wealth accordingly. You must protect any asset that is important to you.
Myth #3: “I Don’t Need Protection. I’m Insured.”
This is another fallacy. You buy a liability policy and figure, “That’s it, I’m covered. If I’m sued, my insurance will take care of it.”
Although liability insurance is an excellent (and recommended) first line of defense against lawsuits, it has its limits. You could be sued for more than your coverage amount, or your policy may not cover you in situations where you thought it would. In fact, liability insurance covers only about one in three lawsuits. Furthermore, no insurance will protect against divorce, bankruptcy, or tax problems, although asset protection will if done in a correct and timely fashion. Even worse, a very large liability insurance policy may actually make one
an attractive target for litigation.
A moderate amount of liability insurance is thus recommended, especially when you consider that no asset protection plan will pay for a defense attorney when you’re sued, although a liability policy generally will (at the same time, this attorney may be looking out more for the insurance company’s interests than your own, which is why it’s often a good idea for you to hire an attorney to watch
over the attorney the insurance company provides you.)
Furthermore, a moderate insurance policy is a good way to divert a creditor from your hard-to-reach, assetprotected wealth to an easy insurance payout. This tactic is more fully discussedin Chapter 4, The Benefits and Psychology of Asset Protection.
A textbook example of the inadequacy of insurance alone comes from a physician named John. John argued for years that he did not need any more lawsuit protection than his five million dollar malpractice policy. However, you can bet he wished that he had protected his assets after an employee sued him for two million dollars on a sexual harassment claim. His
malpractice insurance was also useless to shelter his wealth when Uncle Sam demanded he repay millions that he allegedly over-billed Medicaid. Even when a claim is insured, you must ask whether the insurance will fully cover the claim.
A million-dollar liability policy does not mean much when you are sued for two million. With today’s unpredictable, ludicrous jury awards, you cannot foresee what damages you may someday be forced to pay. Then, too, you may discover that liability insurance is not your complete answer to financial security. There are countless policy exclusions, the inevitable loopholes that let your insurance company deny coverage. Nor will your insurance company always defend a claim that is supposedly insured. The many ‘bad faith’ claims now pending against insurance companies prove this point.
Liability insurance cannot take the place of a good asset protection plan, which you need to protect yourself from any type or size claim.
Protecting your assets is not too costly, and probably will not take more than a few hours of your time. I find the average family can gain strong protection for their assets for a few thousand dollars, sometimes even less. We have sheltered larger fortunes (in the millions) often for around $6,000-20,000, and there are many protective steps that cost absolutely nothing.
A doctor who was a prospective client once complained he did not have the spare cash to set up the few entities he needed to safeguard his $3 million net worth and considered the $15,000 asset protection fee too great a cost. However, he spends $65,000 a year for malpractice insurance. This same $65,000 policy only covers malpractice claims, and only for one million dollars.
Next year the good doctor will pay another $65,000 (assuming his premiums do not increase) for the same limited protection. In comparison, this physician can get complete protection against any lawsuit, in any amount, for the rest of his life, for less than one-fourth of what he pays each year for malpractice insurance. So, which is the better deal…insurance or asset protection?
You can’t think of asset protection as an expense. It’s an investment — a great investment — if you truly want financial security!
There’s a saying that if you ask five attorneys the same legal question, you could get a different response from each one. The same could be said regarding asset protection. This “same question, different response” phenomenon is partially due to the fact that in the U.S., laws are constantly evolving and changing, that asset protection is as much an art as it is a science, that there is more than one way to
effectively protect an asset, and that one must always consider the laws of the state in which a client lives as well as federal law. Despite the foregoing, there are some fundamental components every sound asset protection program shares. In this chapter, these concepts will be broken down and examined one by one.