A Guide to Asset Protection

How to shield your assets from creditors and other claimants

You've worked long and hard for your assets, from your business and home to hard-earned savings and investments. To safeguard them—particularly against liability suits, "America's number one indoor sport"—A Guide to Asset Protection offers proven strategies to help you keep what you may have spent a lifetime earning.

Written by an attorney who specializes in tax, estate, and asset protection planning, this indispensable reference is filled with sound advice and practical tips on how to avoid the litigation jungle, as well as revealing insights on how creditors find and get at your assets. Actual case histories and model agreements steer you through the essentials, including:

• Protection through trusts—irrevocable trusts and gift taxes, life insurance trusts, foreign asset protection trusts (FAPTs)
• Fraudulent conveyances—the laws of fraudulent transfers, what fraudulent conveyance is (and is not)
• Asset protection for married couples—separate and community property, transmutation agreements
• Using family limited partnerships—limited liability companies
• Employing qualified retirement plans—anti-alienation rule, nonqualified retirement plans, individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
• Filing bankruptcy to protect your assets—dischargeable taxes, pre-bankruptcy planning, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13