A very rare window of opportunity is closing, and it's closing very quickly. Currently, the federal gift tax exemption allows you to gift up to $5 million ($10 million for married couples) without incurring a gift tax. This applies if you actually gift your assets now, and it applies equally if you die in 2012…
Life insurance trusts are typically irrevocable, non-amendable trusts that own one or more life insurance policies in order to keep death benefit proceeds outside one's estate and, therefore, avoid estate taxes. Avoiding estate taxes hasn't been an overriding concern for the last couple years, since the exemption has been $10 million for married couples, but…
Some states recognize the common law asset protection doctrine of tenancy by the entirety. A tenancy by the entirety is form of ownership that can only exist between a husband and wife. The other attributes of this form of ownership are the concepts of common time (i.e. it can only exist during the marriage), right…
We've had a lot of interesting call lately regarding unfunded asset protection plans. An asset protection plan--a Family Limited Partnership combined with an The Bridge Trust™--is only useful for protection against creditors if there are actually assets titled in the name of the plan. That should go without saying, but we've encountered it enough recently…
We all have difficulty with change. As an asset protection attorney I see this a lot. It's not atypical at all to see clients who are stuck in losing investments who hold their positions with the intention of getting out as soon as they "get back to even." It almost never fails, however, that one of…