What would happen if someone sues you? Do you have a plan? Or are you simply hoping this never happens to you?

While this situation can happen to anyone, certain people are perceived as bigger threats for lawsuits or creditors than others. Those in this situation take proactive steps to create an asset protection plan to decrease their overall risks.

The process of asset protection planning involves making critical decisions today that will protect your business, yourself, and your hard-earned assets from loss due to lawsuits, bankruptcies, or creditors period. This form of legal planning is especially important for business owners and professionals whose personal assets could be threatened in the event of a claim of someone else.

Federal as well as state laws exempt certain assets from the claims of creditors. You can discuss with which of your assets might be exempted from creditor claims. New Jersey means that you must use the state exemptions.

Because federal bankruptcy exemptions are not available, it can make sense to enhance your protection by converting those non exempt assets into exempted assets. Finally, if you’re an entrepreneur with a business as a sole proprietorship, you may need to schedule the support of an experienced New Jersey asset protection planning lawyer.

A new study has found that younger wealthy women are taking on a big role in terms of family financial planning. Among younger women recently surveyed, nearly 72% said that they were the primary financial planning decision makers in their individual households. That’s a result of a study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit. 

They looked at perceptions around wealth by speaking with more than 1,000 individuals who had at least a million dollars in investments. Those respondents were sorted into three specific categories; baby boomer women, millennial women and men of all ages. Young women with money are far more idealistic and entrepreneurial than their mothers’ generation and they have more control of the family estate than ever before, according to the results of the study.

A number of different areas yielded clear differences of opinion. For example, younger women were most interested in directing their wealth to social causes, even if this meant minimizing their children’s inheritance. Approximately 22% of older women were more inclined to keep investment and charity decisions separate. Only 7% of younger women who responded to the study would say the same. They chose to invest based on their principles and younger women were more likely to bequeath some of their wealth to charities. This reflected a bigger sense of obligation to society as a whole. Younger women were more likely to claim ownership of making the financial decisions within their household in direct comparison to older women. Many of the women who were included in the study amassed wealth prior to meeting their spouses, which led many financial advisors to comment on the study to state that this seemed natural that those women will want to maintain some control over their finances. Approximately half of the time, older women self-identified as the key decision maker. However, they couldn’t name any particular area where they had more influence than their spouse. If you’re interested in estate planning, financial planning and retirement planning, you need the support of an attorney.     

Have you ever thought about using estate planning tools including a living trust to protect your loved ones and your own future? If so, scheduling a consultation with a knowledgeable estate planning attorney is strongly recommended because a living trust has to be properly drafted and funded in order to be valid. People often assume that trusts can do everything, however, not every problem is solved by having a trust. 

A trust can address many different issues, particularly when you have an experienced estate planning lawyer on your side who is very familiar with trust language. Here are some of the most important and valuable things that clients often choose to do with a living trust. These include:

•      Protecting minor children by holding money in the trust until they are responsible enough to manage it themselves.
•      Reducing estate taxes, particularly if your state assesses their own taxes as well.
•      Keeping assets inside the family if you are concerned about potential divorce for your beneficiaries.
•      Protecting your grown-up children from not being able to manage the money due to alcohol, drug related issues or mismanagement, allows a trustee to hold the money for the lifetime of the child and distribute it as necessary.
•      Avoid probate. If you place assets inside your trust during the course of your lifetime rather than relying on your will, you can avoid the probate process and make things easier for your loved ones.
•      Ensure privacy within the family. A will that is probated becomes matter of public record along with personal details about you, such as an inventory listing of your assets and the value of those assets. Using a living trust can help to guard against this.
•      Protect you while you are still alive. If the trust is funded during your lifetime and you later develop an incapacity, a successor trustee is eligible to manage the trust assets on your behalf. This important for those people who do not have children and those people who are single.

Schedule a consultation with an estate planning lawyer today.

If you are thinking about the best way to protect yourself, regardless of the current political laws surrounding estate and tax planning, it’s a good idea to engage with a lawyer who also has a background in asset protection planning.

Most people don’t understand what asset protection planning includes until it’s too late. Shielding your assets from creditors and predators in advance, however, is essential if you don’t want to learn the lesson the hard way.

As a client, you will want to consider all real estate, family business, investments accounts and life insurance interests by transferring them into a trust, if possible. Issues like a family business can complicate your estate planning significantly. Since a family business usually seen as a long-term investment, you might want to sell it into a trust. This will give an income stream to older people who want to give up the day to day operations and responsibilities of the business without losing all of their access to the security of the financial security provided by the asset. Business interests should typically be sold when the value is modest, so that growth can occur outside of the individual person’s estate. Selling off a business interest also allows for things known as valuation discounts, such that greater equity goes into the trust. Life insurance can also be sold into a trust in order to avoid three years look back issues.

In the event that you choose to gift life insurance into an irrevocable trust and pass away within three years, typically the internal revenue service will put that asset back into the estate, but a sale of the life insurance policy into a trust can avoid this problem. Finally, real estate can be sold into a trust for similar reasons as family businesses. 

If you wait until a legal claim or issue has already come up, the options for really protecting your assets are much more limited. That’s why you need the support of an attorney months or years in advance.

Protecting these assets and also considering the different ways that a family business or an individual could be exposed to the risk of lawsuits and other challenges should be carefully considered with the help of an experienced estate planning attorney when you are planning to look forward into the future and to do as much as possible to prevent problems and personal liabilities.

Many people wish to pass on valuable property, including that which may be located in other countries, to their loved ones. But what happens when you inherit property overseas. It might initially seem like a dream come true but it could come with challenges.

Many Americans who inherit property overseas will have to navigate a very complicated foreign legal system and often in another language. The amount of paperwork associated with these international receipts of materials in and of itself can be overwhelming. There are accounts that must be transferred, expenses that must be paid, and other issues that may arise based on the type of property you inherit. Furthermore, there may be a legacy associated with the property that you receive, making it difficult to hold up to these expectations if you were not anticipating the receipt of such property. When an American inherits property overseas, it falls under foreign statutes.

This means that wherever the real estate is located, the laws of that country govern it. This makes it all the more important to ensure that if you have access to foreign property that you plan to pass onto your loved ones, that you set aside time to talk to estate planning professionals in that local area about what this might look like for your family and how to best avoid challenges for them in the future.