Saturday, February 1, 2014

How Asset Protection Planning Is Carried Out

By Serena Price


Asset protection involves the use of legal mechanisms and laws to protect assets of individuals and businesses from the judgements of the civil money agencies. On the other hand, asset protection planning is used for protecting assets from creditor claims in line with tax policies and concealment. If a person is facing a monetary judgement, he/she would even become bankrupt in attempts to repay it. In this manner, he would require a comprehensive protection plan in order to keep the assets away from creditors.

There are certain asset planning techniques that can be used to handle assets, including IRA contribution maximization, retitling various assets, using limited liability companies, moving funds to an irrevocable trust, or using a family partnership. The intervention of the attorney is usually vital to developing a good plan. The attorney helps in discussions of short and long term financial goals and, equally, helping the client in improvising a comprehensive plan.

Usually, the plan is only operational in cases where there is no any pending lawsuit. If a lawsuit is already in place, the court cannot defraud the creditors. In fact, an asset protection plan should be put in place before a lawsuit is issued. For example, in case a person has been and attempts to evade the creditors by transferring the assets, the court cancels it and reverses the whole process.

An asset protection plan comprises of two major goals, particular estate planning goals as well as short term and long term goals.Examining the short and long term goals enables a person to learn about the current and future income sources, the sum of money required for retiring, as well as the sum of money to be passed to the heirs if the person dies.

Once the financial goals are examined and a financial plan is put in place, the current assets can then be reviewed to determine if they can be exempted from creditors. In case they are not, the assets can be pre-positioned. The financial plan also allows prepositioning of assets that a person may intend to have in the future in attempts to protect them from any potential creditors.

After all that, calculation of the net worth of all assets is then conducted. The next involves developing an estate plan for addressing matters like setting up a program for handling the client if he/she became mentally incapacitated. Additionally, the plans are also used to assign those to take care of the family and assets in case of death.

There are specific estate planning techniques which can be used in the overall plan. The main protection programs used are family liability companies and irrevocable trusts. They are collectively used to take care of the person, family and all the beneficiaries.

After integrating the financial goals with those of the estate planning, the process of asset protection planning can then go on. The plan is majorly used to position or preposition the assets to be protected from creditors. Negotiations can then be reached between the person and the creditors.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment