The ultimate goal in establishing an asset protection plan is to make it extremely difficult for someone to pursue successful legal action against you with a remote possibility of collecting a judgement against your assets. A well drafted asset protection plan will lead a legal adversary to conclude that it does not make financial sense to go after your protected assets, and therefore attempt to settle the matter for pennies on the dollar, if at all.

While trusts are the preferred vehicle of choice for asset protection planing, no asset protection plan will be successful if your liability exists prior to establishment of the trust and you are found to have made a fraudulent transfer of assets. The optimum time to create your asset protection trust is well before a problem occurs. The length of time it takes a trust to “season” varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and levels of protection can vary significantly; along with the cost to establish your structure.

This is an area of law which requires significant expertise and you should retain competent, experienced counsel from start to finish.