Why Mile High Estate Planning?

Managing Attorney Blake Harris and his team of attorneys at Mile High Estate
Planning have years of experience implementing global solutions to provide our
clients with bulletproof asset protection. We have developed an international
network of Trust Companies, Trust Protectors, and Bankers who help to
safeguard our clients' assets. Few firms worldwide have access to such a
sophisticated network of partners. We have negotiated with these partners to
provide our clients with highly discounted fees. If you are looking for protection
from lawsuits, you have come to the right place. Contact us today for your free
initial consultation.

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Why is Asset Protection necessary?

It is an unfortunate fact that today's society in which we live is a litigious one. You
are never more than one mistake away from putting everything that you have
worked for at risk in a lawsuit. Alternatively, creditors may also come and try to
take away your assets for various reasons. Given the volatility of business
fortunes, people will occasionally make mistakes that can potentially threaten
their long-term financial future. Further, the growing scourge of identity theft can
also place you at risk of running afoul of creditors.

When your insurance has policy limits or will not cover claims that are filed
against you, it will be your assets that are at risk in a lawsuit. When someone
obtains a judgement against you, it will be your assets that they are able to come
after to satisfy the judgement. While there are some categories of assets that
would be off limits to judgement holders, mostly everything else is fair game. This
means that what you have could become what they have with a few strokes of
the pen.
If you work in a profession that is prone to lawsuits, this will be even more of a
risk for you. For example, if you have a professional practice, your malpractice
insurance may only provide you with so much protection. Similarly, if you are
starting a business and have to guarantee your loans, you may also be at risk of
losing your assets if things do not work out as you hope.

Asset protection means that things do not have to be this way and you do not
need to place yourself at the same degree of risk. Through various proactive
steps that you would take ahead of time, you can build a proverbial fence around
most of your assets to keep them out of the hands of creditors and judgement
holders. Once a case goes to court, you have little to no control over the outcome
and whether everything that you have worked for will be threatened. Asset
protection is a must in order to give you some peace of mind.

What does it mean to protect your

assets?
Protecting your assets means that you preserve them for both your personal use
and for the use of your family in later generations. Asset protection means that
you have taken any of a number of possible steps to either change the form of
ownership of the assets or the location of ownership in order to make it difficult or
impossible for creditors or judgement holders to reach your property. These are
the various structures that you would establish to either create some separation
between you and your assets or to move them into entities that limit your amount
of liability. Asset protection is an overall strategy followed by the execution of any
one of a number of steps that are recommended by the attorney to give you the
most possible protection.
There is no one magic step that you would take that could give you absolute
protection over every asset that you have. Instead, asset protection means that
you have worked with an asset protection attorney to devise a strategy of various
measures that you would take to give as much protection as possible to as many
assets as you can. When done effectively, asset protection will greatly limit the
amount of assets that judgement holders can get from you. It is important to
remember that asset protection steps are done within the confines of the law and
are completely legal so long as they are done while the threat of a lawsuit or
other negative even is only general.
Protecting your assets will mean that your attorney will scrutinize the laws of
various states and jurisdictions in order to find a general strategy of where to hold
your assets and who should exercise control over them. Asset protection will
make as many of your assets as unreachable as possible. It means that, even if
you transfer control over your assets to someone else, you still own them, but
nobody else can.

What do you want to protect?

After a lifetime of work, you will hopefully have a number of different assets and
properties that you will want to keep safe from creditors using asset protection. In
order to devise the strongest possible asset protection strategy, it is helpful to
know ahead of time exactly what it is that you want to protect. Then, working with
an asset protection attorney, you will want to figure out which of these assets are
already protected by law and which assets you will need to take steps to protect.
The good news is that, in most states, one of the most important assets of all,
your home, is already protected from creditors due to homestead exemptions.
Hopefully, you will have assets in your portfolio besides your home. For example,
you may have other business investments, including real estate that do not fall
under any other exemption. Alternatively, you may have your own business
whose assets you want to provide with the highest degree of protection.
Since your bank accounts are one of the first things that creditors will go after,
you will need to find a way to move the money from your bank account into
another legal instrument. Liquid assets are among the easiest things for creditors
to attach, so you will have to go to great effort to find a way to protect them.
While hard assets such as real estate are slightly more difficult, they are still not
off limits for creditors and you must find a way to structure the ownership of these
hard assets to keep them in your hands no matter what even if you have to cede
control over them.
You may also want to protect your retirement accounts or the assets that you
have saved for that stage in your life. Some steps have statutory protections for
retirement assets, but when it comes to bankruptcy proceedings, there is a limit
on the amount of assets that are protected. Working with an asset protection
attorney can help you devise strategies to give the highest amount of protection
to the most assets possible.

How does Asset Protection work?

The first step that you will take in the asset protection process is to find an
attorney who has a specialization in the field. While there may be a temptation to
do it yourself in order to save money, this is an area where you need to do
everything right. If your asset protection strategy is based on false assumptions
or if someone has made an error, you may be unprotected when you previously
thought that your assets are safe. You will want to find an attorney who has a
specialty across multiple legal disciplines since there is no one single way to
ensure asset protection.

When you retain attorney Blake Harris of Mile High Estate Planning, he will sit
down with you to understand what assets you want to protect and what your
short and long term goals are. He will take the time to listen to you while applying
his professional expertise to your situation, answering any questions that you
may have. Blake has a wide variety of experience working with people of various
net worths.
Once Blake has spoken with you and understands what you are trying to
accomplish, he will draw up an asset protection strategy for you. This may
involve moving assets to certain places or creating various trusts in order to hold
some of your assets. In consultation with Blake, you will have to decide what you
are comfortable with in terms of new structures and homes for your assets.

Asset protection may involve executing a range of legal documents that transfer
decision making power over some of your assets to trustees. It may include steps
to create various corporate entities and transferring your assets to these entities
because of the protections that they provide. Then, you may need to shift other
financial assets into certain accounts that are protected from creditors. For
example, some states may have absolute protections for retirement accounts as
well as other safeguards for other types of annuities that provide you with an
income. The most important thing to remember is that your asset protection
attorney will have to start putting the plan in place immediately because any
asset protection steps that are taken after a lawsuit is filed may be considered a
fraudulent conveyance and then disallowed.
Asset Protection Strategies
Asset protection can be done successfully using a number of different strategies.
There is no one overarching way to protect your assets. Instead, it will likely
mean that you have completed many different steps as part of an overall
strategy. The first step towards asset protection will generally involve purchasing
insurance that can provide you with a relatively wide degree of protection.
However, the mistake that many people make is to stop after simply purchasing a
policy. Insurance does not always protect you to the extent that you need and
when you require it. As a result, you will need other strategies. There are several
different moves that could be considered forms of asset protection that will be
described below.

You can create a limited liability corporation for a business or to hold property.

Then, your liability extends only to the LLC's property and are not responsible for
anything else beyond that. Some people create LLCs specifically to own
property. Others create a structure of multiple LLCs to further minimize risk.
Another asset protection strategy is to create a trust. This will mean that you
grant property to the trust, and it is under the control of the trustee. Trusts can be
either onshore or offshore. There is a greater degree of protection for offshore
trusts, but they are more expensive to establish. The trust essentially becomes
an identity separate from the grantor since it is a new structure with control that is
separate and distinct from the person who has beneficial ownership of the
assets.
Additionally, you can move some of your assets into accounts that enjoy
statutory protections from creditors. For example, retirement accounts are
protected from judgement creditors in some states (but not necessarily from
bankruptcy court above a certain amount). Further, some annuities and life
insurance policies are protected, provided that they are for the benefit of the
person who is seeking to shield their property. You can also transfer property to
your spouse's name or hold the property jointly with your spouse. In some states,
joint tenancy in the property is enough to shield it from creditors.
Can a Trust protect assets from a
lawsuit?
A trust is a legal instrument so, naturally, the answer to this question is that it
depends. When structured the right way and in the proper time frame a trust
should provide you with asset protection from lawsuits and creditors. The
important thing is that the trust must be designed in such a way that there is a
separation between you and the assets. In most cases, this means that you will
have to surrender some form of control over the asset to the trustee, even while
you maintain beneficial ownership. If you retain the power to control your assets,
the courts will likely find your trust instrument to be a legal fiction since you are
the trust. A successful trust depends on creating a degree of separation between
you and the trust assets.

The most important aspect of a trust that will provide you with legal protection of
your assets is that the trust is irrevocable. This means that it cannot be undone
or modified. This represents a permanent surrender of the trust assets such that
it would be inequitable for creditors to be able to take it from you, since they
would really not be taking it from you. When a trust is revocable, creditors can
still reach it because you ultimately have the power to undo the trust and take
back the assets. Even if you are the beneficiary of the irrevocable trust, it is the
surrender of control of the assets to the trustee that legally separates you from
your assets. Exactly how much protection is provided by a trust depends on the
law of the jurisdiction where it has been established. Some attorneys advise you
to establish a trust in certain overseas jurisdictions since it is nearly impossible
for creditors to reach the assets that are held there.

Frequently Asked Questions

1How to select an Asset Protection Attorney?
The first thing that you need to do when looking for an asset protection attorney
is to pay close attention to the attorney’s experience. You will not want a legal
generalist because they may not know the ins and outs of asset protection.
Instead, you will want someone with a dedicated experience in the area along
with knowledge of the various areas that asset protection law touches upon. In
addition, you will want to work with someone who has experience working with
both high net worth individuals as well as people of average means who are
looking to protect their assets.

It is best to look around among several different attorneys before settling on one
asset protection attorney. You should find multiple attorneys and interview them
to get a sense of how they would work with you. Talk to each attorney to
understand how they would help protect your assets. While asset protection
strategies are not a protracted matter like litigation, chemistry with the attorney is
also important.

You will want to pay close attention to the attorney’s credentials. Signs that the
attorney’s credentials are good include leadership positions in the legal
community, especially in the asset protection area. This is a sign that the
attorney is respected by their peers. You will also want to examine the attorney’s
track record. While you will not be able to know exactly which clients the attorney
has worked with, you should pay close attention to the type of clients that the
attorney has.
2Who should be the Trust Protector of your Asset Protection Trust?
3How to judgment-proof your Real Estate?
4(What are) the threats to your Assets and Wealth?
5How best to protect your good fortune and secure your financial future?

Asset Protection Glossary of

Important Terms
Here are some important terms to learn when it comes to asset protection:

Fraudulent Conveyance - Essentially, this is why you want to set up your asset
protection strategy ahead of time because if you move an asset in an attempt to
avoid a judgement of impede a creditor, it is fraudulent and the court will disallow
the transfer and your property will be at risk.
Fraudulent Conveyance - Essentially, this is why you want to set up your asset
protection strategy ahead of time because if you move an asset in an attempt to
avoid a judgement of impede a creditor, it is fraudulent and the court will disallow
the transfer and your property will be at risk.
Offshore Asset Protection Trust - There are certain countries that have structured
their laws to make it very difficult for creditors to reach assets that are held there.
In this type of trust, you establish the trust in the foreign country and the assets
remain there. The assets will be held overseas and controlled from their and will
be subject to the laws of the foreign jurisdiction.
Limited Liability Company - This is a corporate form that will generally provide
you with the highest amount of assets protection. Every owner of the LLC is not
personally liable for the debts of the LLC. The only thing that creditors can reach
is the property of the LLC itself. This is a way of making sure that your business
liabilities do not threaten your entire net worth.