Sophisticated Asset Protection: A Practicing Lawyer's Guide to Keeping What's Yours

You built something worth protecting. Then a lawsuit, a guarantee gone bad, a business that turned, or a claim that exceeded your insurance made you realize how exposed you are. It usually feels like it may already be too late to protect your assets. Often it is not.

This easy-to-read book gives you a clear picture of how creditors collect and a practical guide to the strategies and structures that stop them. Through real client stories you will learn how to use exemptions, marital planning, trusts, domestic and offshore structures, LLCs, and equity strips to protect real estate, savings, businesses, retirement plans, and many other assets.

Written for the business owner, professional, investor, and anyone else with something to lose, it covers how judgment creditors actually collect and what they can and cannot reach; how exemptions and bankruptcy fit in; voidable transfer law and the timing that makes or breaks a plan; marriage, community property, and transmutation agreements; building a protective trust, domestic asset protection trusts, IDGTs, SLATs, and hybrid trusts; offshore trusts, with their tax and reporting rules stated plainly; the Intelligent Wealth Trust; offshore banking and investing; choosing and using LLCs and other entities, including the charging order; protecting real estate, rental property, digital assets, retirement plans, the professional practice, and liquid assets; choosing the right state for a trust or an LLC; and a complete planning example that pulls it all together. A state-by-state appendix, a glossary, a checklist for where to start, and answers to the questions clients actually ask round it out.

Forget the impregnable structure. It is a fairy tale. What works is putting yourself in a better negotiating position before you need one, and this book shows you how.

Jacob Stein has spent more than 25 years protecting the wealth of over two thousand clients, from small business owners to some of the world's most prominent families. He is the managing partner of Aliant, LLP, a California Certified Tax Law Specialist, and is ranked in the Chambers and Partners High Net Worth Guide. He has taught more than 1,000 seminars on asset protection to lawyers, CPAs, and financial professionals, and he represents clients across the United States.