Law Offices of
Hehr & Myers Co., L.P.A.

440-449-3266

4401 Rockside Road Ste 200
Independence, OH 44131

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Asset Protection

The lifetime to build – a lawsuit to lose

As professionals, we spend our lives building our practices and creating estates to protect and provide for the ones we love. But all too often, those plans are compromised by the impact of spurious lawsuits.

In today’s sue-happy society, juries all too often play Robin Hood – taking from those they perceive to be the rich and giving to those they believe to be the poor – seemingly without regard to the facts the case.

Even for those lucky enough not to face a frivolous lawsuit, the rising cost of malpractice or liability insurance is becoming an almost insurmountable burden for many businesses.

Asset Protection Planning enables you to:

• Protect your home, family and business at a reasonable price
• Control your liability – reduce or eliminate frivolous lawsuits
• Make solid moral decisions without disrupting your lifestyle
• Gain the peace of mind you need to concentrate on your business

Click Here to Download our Asset Protection Worksheet

Combined Methods Offer More Security

The combination of a Limited Liability Company and a Foreign Asset Protection Trust enables you to protect your assets from even the most aggressive future creditors while maintaining the control and benefit of those assets.

A Limited Liability Company is a Company between members that allows the Managers, usually the husband and/or wife, to maintain control of their assets while ownership of those assets is transferred to the members (their children, grandchildren or other benefactors).

You maintain absolute control of over all assets placed in your Limited Liability Company, by retaining the Manager’s position.

Although useful for tax and estate planning, a Limited Liability Company only provides partial protection from litigation.

A Limited Liability Company ought to provide all the protection a professional needs, but with the creativity of the judicial system, protection is all to often subject to the whim of an individual judge.

To ensure the highest level of protection, combine your Limited Liability Company with an Asset Protection Trust.

Foreign Trusts Avoid Errant Judgments

An Asset Protection Trust is a discretionary trust designed to benefit you, your spouse and children and other you designate. The trust is controlled by a majority action of the trustees you name – and as a protector of your trust, you retain the power to hire and fire trustees and veto their decisions.

Establishing an Asset Protection Trust in a foreign country allows you to select a nation with more favorable asset protection statutes – in other words, one that is less favorable to the plaintiffs in spurious lawsuits.

Both the Limited Liability Company and the Asset Protection Trust are established on a tax neutral-basis, meaning that their income is normally reported on the partners and/or beneficiaries income tax returns.

When to Establish Your Plan

The U.S. court system has long held that transfers of assets intended to defraud, hinder or delay known or likely creditors can be unwound, that is, the court can set those transfers aside to satisfy your creditors’ claims. That’s why it is essential to establish your Asset Protection Plan when there are no legal actions known, threatened or expected.

Where to Begin

To establish your Asset Protection Plan, Hehr & Myers Co., L.P.A., will conduct an evaluation to determine if you are free of liability, re-evaluate your insurance premiums based on your new plan 30 to 90 days before they are due and deploy the Six Steps of Asset Protection:

• Create a domestic Limited Liability Company
• Create an Asset Protection Trust
• Make the trust the Member of your Company
• Consider diversifying through multiple Companies and trusts
• Separate business and investment entities for even greater protection
• Transfer assets to Companies and trusts

What Happens if You Are Sued

If you face litigation, the assets from the Limited Liability Company are transferred to the Asset Protection Trust and ownership of the trust is also moved offshore. With these moves the assets are protected against unfavorable U.S. judgments.

In addition, because assets have been moved to a nation with favorable asset protection statutes, it is extremely unlikely that a plaintiff could recover them, even in litigation offshore.