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Adler Law E-Letter
September 2010 |
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Law Offices of Steven M. Adler, PLLC
666 Old Country Road, Suite 605
Garden City, New York 11530
Phone: (516) 876-1105
Fax: (516) 794-0463
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Greetings!
Welcome to September's edition of the Adler Law E-Letter.
I hope everyone had a great summer.
First of all, I'd like to wish all of you who
celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
a Happy and Healthy New Year filled with
Peace and Prosperity.
Dolores A. Jannuzzi, Esq. |
This month, in response to a question posed to us from a
client of ours, Dolores and I have written an interesting and informative article on Asset Protection Planning. The information
in the Article is so comprehensive that we have decided to break the article up into three (3) parts that will appear in the next several months issues of Adler Law.
Once again, we have also included a new addition of
Strange But True.
If you have a question or concern with respect to any particular legal subject, please contact me or Dolores Jannuzzi, Esq. and we would be happy to discuss your topic in a future issue of Adler Law. In addition, if you know of someone who may be interested to read this newsletter, please forward it to them by clicking the "Forward Email" link at the bottom of this page.
Thanks and have a great day.
Sincerely,
Steven M. Adler |
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 Asset Protection Planning.
(Part 1 of 3)
What Asset Protection Planning is:
Asset protection planning involves the application of a series of lawful techniques that will protect your assets from claims of future creditors. The techniques are designed to deter potential creditors from going after your assets and frustrate them if they do by making it difficult or impossible for such creditors to take possession of your assets or collect judgments against you.
Asset protection planning is the process of organizing one's assets and affairs in advance to guard against risks to which the assets would otherwise be subject. Asset protection planning may be applied to protect every type of asset, including an operating business, real estate or a professional practice.
In cases where significant sums are involved, asset protection planning often includes setting up a series of trusts, partnerships and/or off-shore entities to hold legal title to your assets. A future creditor who recognizes how difficult it would be to collect on any judgment it may win, might decide it makes little sense to pursue a claim, or be willing to settle for pennies on the dollar.
What Asset Protection Planning is Not:
As important as it is to know what an asset protection planning component is, it is equally important to know what it is not. Asset protection planning will not aid a client in evading the payment of taxes. Asset protection planning does not use the concept of hiding assets but works to protect those assets. A hidden asset may be found, but a protected asset is a more secure one.
Asset protection is not about cheating existing creditors. By the time that a person has signed a personal guarantee that pledges their assets for a loan, or they have a serious accident, or they incur some other significant liability that threatens to wipe out their wealth, the time for asset protection has passed.
There is a very sharp dividing line between "legal" asset protection planning and actions to "defraud" creditors, which are criminal. For that reason, it is essential to have an attorney guide you through the process.
Who Needs Asset Protection Planning:
Thousands of lawsuits are filed in this country every day of the week. Litigation cripples business. It is time consuming, expensive, and emotionally charged. It detracts from our ability to focus on productive matters, as attention is directed away from matters of efficiency and innovation. Parties to a lawsuit spend so much time meeting with lawyers and fighting with the other side that nothing gets accomplished. As businesses are dragged under by the burdens of litigation, our whole society suffers.
If you are engaged in any business or real estate activity or you have a professional practice, you absolutely need asset protection because chances are that sooner or later you will be sued. And if you are sued, everything that you have worked so hard to create will be placed in jeopardy. The costs of defending even a frivolous suit can easily range from $50,000 to $100,000. Once you get to court, you will find that the system is heavily weighted toward the sympathetic plaintiff. Judges and juries are continually expanding theories of liability, and stratospheric damage and punitive damage awards are now routine. It is no longer uncommon for awards in negligence cases to exceed $1 million.
Our legal system should hold people responsible for their acts. If someone causes injury, that person should be required to fairly compensate the victim for his loss. Not many people would object to this principle. The problem is that this general principle bears no relationship to what is actually occurring in the legal system today.
Does Asset Protection Planning Work?
In most situations, a properly structured asset protection plan that integrates asset protection planning with estate planning results in a better outcome than without. This result depends, however, upon several variables. These variables range from your net worth, your goals, the nature of the assets transferred, the skill with which the asset protection plan was drafted and defended, and the asset protection vehicles selected to implement the asset protection plan.
While the goals of asset protection planning may vary, the plan must be user-friendly or it may be doomed from the beginning due to your discomfort with an unfriendly plan. Since being a party to a lawsuit is often a loss from the get go, plans must be drafted to deter litigation. The plan must provide an incentive for an early and cheap settlement if it fails to deter the litigation in the first place. The net effect of the deterrence or an early settlement is to level the litigation playing field between the plaintiff and the defendant.
The standard applied in determining whether the asset protection component of an asset protection plan "worked" is usually defined by reference to where you would have been, financially, had you not engaged in asset protection. The ultimate goal of asset protection planning is realized when you weather a legal storm at least moderately better than you otherwise would have in the absence of any planning.
Next month, this continuing article will focus on how to know if you are an attractive lawsuit target and when asset protection planning may already be too late. Then in November, we will discuss actual asset protection strategies. |
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 Strange
but True!
A $765.00 bottle of Beer! According to Scottish firm BrewDog, "The End of History" is the "strongest (55% alcohol), most expensive and most shocking beer in the world."
Just 12 bottles were made and the company has already sold out. They will be shipped out to buyers in the United States, Canada, Italy, Denmark, Scotland and England next week. The dead animals which were used to create the beers' unusual appearance were four squirrels, seven weasels and a hare. All were roadkill, James Watt, co-founder of BrewDog, said defensively.
What better to go with a  $765 bottle of beer? A $69 hot dog, the world most expensive tube o' beef! In the past restaurateur Stephen Bruce has already gotten folks to pony up $1,000 for an ice-cream sundae. So what's a measly $69 for a hot dog? Make that an "haute dog." Bruce's famous Serendipity 3 restaurant in New York City celebrated National Hot Dog Day June 23 by marrying a foot-long tube of meat with such decidedly nontraditional accoutrements as black truffles and foie gras, served on a pretzel roll grilled in white truffle butter.
German police have taken a seven month baby away from a couple in Bavaria and local child welfare investigators are looking into them after the couple put the child up for sale on Internet auction site Ebay. The description read, "Male baby almost 8 months old, sleeps well through the night and does not cry much." "Good for infertile couple or single man/woman wanting a child." The baby boy was put on sale on Tuesday at a starting price of one euro (1.58 dollars) and was withdrawn from the site around two and a half hours later, police said. There had been no posted offers but the couple may have recieved numerous offers via email. The mother said it was meant as a joke, but police and state officials failed to see the funny side, putting the baby into state care and charging both parents with attempted child trafficking. Police cheif Wesley Offerman is quoted as saying, "We all find our kids annoying sometimes but selling them is not the answer."
Driver Bryan Parslow, 19, injured himself and three passengers when he crashed his car into a tree near Wheatland, N.Y., in May. It turns out he was playing "hold your breath" with the other passengers and passed out.
Police in Tennessee are still deciding if they should charge a man after rescuers searched for him for three hours because he was thought to have drowned, only to find out later he had actually been watching his own rescue efforts from a nearby bar.
An 18-year-old Indonesian man says he was seduced by a cow, and that's why he was having sex with it. A neighbour caught Gusti Ngurah Alit allegedly wooing the farm animal on Sunday in a village on the resort island of Bali. |
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Legal Services
We Provide:
Estate Planning
Asset Protection
Elder Law
Estate Administration
Real Estate Law
Corporate Law
Guardianship
Litigation
Moving Violations
Personal Injury
Family Law
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The Law Offices of Steven M. Adler, PLLC are committed to providing their clients with the highest level of professional legal services at reasonable prices. Steven M. Adler, Esq., along with the rest of his law firm's highly competent support staff, gives all of his clients the personal attention and the legal expertise which they are entitled to receive. The Law Offices of Steven M. Adler, PLLC takes pride in the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of their legal services.
Law Offices of Steven M. Adler, PLLC
666 Old Country Road, Suite 605
Garden City, New York 11530
Phone: (516) 876-1105
Fax: (516) 794-0463
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