Asset protection should be just one of your many financial goals. While most people have estate planning, taxes, and other investment goals, incorporating asset protection can greatly benefit you.
Starting off, asset protection is the concept of and strategies for guarding a person’s wealth. It’s the protection that is a type of financial planning that is intended to protect a person’s assets from creditor claims. Asset protection can be used for both personal and business asset protection techniques to limit creditors access to certain valuable assets while operating within the bounds of debtor-creditor law. There’s the saying “if you don’t own it, they can’t take it from you”, which applies directly to asset protection. While some of the strategies used can be extremely complex, there are some plans that are as simple as having an “at-risk spouse” transfer title to the property to the name of a non-risk spouse.
Asset protection also helps to insulate assets in a legal way without engaging in any type of illegal practices like concealment (hiding of the assets), contempt, fraudulent transfer, tax evasion or bankruptcy fraud. We advise that effective asset protection begins before a claim or liability occurs ─ if you decide to protect your assets after a claim or liability occurs it’s usually too late by that point. Common methods for asset protection include asset protection trusts, accounts-receivable financing, and family limited partnerships.
When you’re integrating an asset protection plan into your other financial goals, speak with a financial advisor first. They’ll be able to help you figure out which plan of action is the best. Sometimes advisors can’t always know what you want to prioritize or what outcomes are most important to you, so be sure to communicate that. In order to fully achieve an integrated plan, your financial planner, accountant, estate planner, and insurance professional all have to be on the same page, so communication is key.
Asset protection can also help provide certain tax benefits. However, make sure that your planner shows you the full depth about what you’re taxes are going to look like.
The ultimate goal of asset protection strategies, whether they are simple or complex, are placing the client’s property beyond the reach of future creditors. Asset protection strategies are a true and valuable way to protect what you have earned and can be extremely successful if they are used properly.
Today, asset protection calls for more than just strategic asset allocation. Your portfolio must have a defensive nature to it, while also actively responding to any risks that can decimate other portfolios. At Integrity Wealth Management and Insurance Services, LLC, we find the investment tools that will help protect you from negative returns in your early retirement and guard against inflation. We’re able to give you methods that are considered to be more effective when it comes to protecting your assets.
Call us at Integrity Wealth Management and Insurance Services, LLC, for a free consultation with no obligation, to see if an asset protection plan is right for you. Contact us here or call us today at 714-947-0105.