Both books, The Asset Protection Manual and The Boston Tea Party both offers information about assets and how they should be utilized in terms of management and protection from unsuccessful business ventures or tax miscalculations. Here’s another case to look at, and it concerns asset protection.

The judgment in a case that involved a single member limited liability company (SMLLC) and a creditor being allowed to get ahold of the defendant’s business assets instigated controversial discussion among practitioners about whether SMLCC is secured by the same charging order protection that secures multi-member LLC. This and all about asset protection, a subject discussed responsibly and intelligently in my book, The Asset Protection Manual.

In the case of Meyer  V. Christie, the District Court of Kansas released a charging order against an SMLLC that allowed creditors to reach the assets of the debtor’s limited … Read More »

Asset Protection is not too different than life itself. It can grind you into the dust, or it can be a breeze—all of that depends on how much work you put into both. If you want to strengthen your Asset Protection, get a plan. You might need an example of that, so let me describe to you a little situation I recently had: yesterday, a client rang me up. He was in a whole heap of trouble, you see, as he had just figured out he owed $600,000 to the IRS thanks to bungled taxes.

That is one large amount of money—I don’t have to tell you that—to owe, but my client kept his calm. The client was sorry for his mistake and wanted to give the IRS their fair share, but he needed to be able to do that at … Read More »

Family Law these sorts of issues are never pretty, but in a “supportive relationship” case being able to confirm (or deny) the location of a person can be key to proving its cohabitation element. Although most states do have laws that provide for reduction/termination of alimony if the ex-spouse is cohabiting with the opposite sex in a way that is “in the manner of husband and wife, mutually assuming those rights and duties usually attendant upon the marriage relationship,” what counts as a “supportive relationship” is not always clear.

A common go-to in proving these cases is video surveillance. Unfortunately, while the video can record the two opposite sex cohabiting day-to-day, it is also quite expensive, as you need to prove overnight stays over a long period of time.

Thanks to the commonness of cell phones as main mode of communication, Cell … Read More »

Read on, and be forewarned come next tax season.

Deadlines,

In case you are living overseas, or a member of the U.S. military deployed beyond the United States, then you probably already know that the date for filing your tax return is automatically extended by two months. June 15, not April 15, is when they are due.

However, if you failed to meet the June deadline for filing your tax return, then there are two possible extensions you might take. The first extension, if filed on/before the June 15 deadline, will extend the filing date to October 18. Careful note must be made that this is not an extension of time to pay your tax that you may owe, but to file it. Also key to recall is that interest, which stands at 4%/year (compounded daily) is made on any payment made after … Read More »

Has an “expert” ever told you that if you own a property as a tenant of the entirety that you cannot utilize the property to satisfy just one tenant’s debt?

Most people will likely answer “yes” to the above question, and it might come as a surprise when I say that the “experts” are incorrect. This is a common asset protection myth that I broke down by purchasing beneficial interest from a spendthrift protected trust.

Again, if you ask an “expert” about this topic, they will tell you that the beneficial interest cannot be removed from the beneficiary due to the spendthrift protection. In most occasions, they are correct about that. If you browse the bankruptcy code, you will usually see specific language dedicated to clarifying how the spendthrift protection stops the trust and its assets from even being involved in a … Read More »

IRS accused of fraud by 9th Circuit Court, Case No. 00-70858.

Download (PDF, 139KB)