IS There A legal Way To Protect Your Assests Against Lawsuits & Judgements?

Question

I friend of mine had a stroke. His insurance was payed a limited amount and his personal and business assests were virtually wiped out. I want to protect myself from a situation like this. I am a real estate developer and own lots of property. Is there anyway to protect these from the hospital form they make you sign that they can go after any assests you have?

Answer 1

Don't sign it OR give someone in a country (like Canada), possibly a relative legal ownership of all of your properties.  However, you'll end up paying quite a bit on legal fees to transfer the ownership.

Answer 2

Incorporate. Most tax attorneys charge between $150.00-300.00 to make you a corporation. That way you are not liable beyond the assets of your company. This also separates you from the company. The hospital would then make you sign for your personal assets, but the company cannot be touched. Another way is to have a life policy which would protect the company in the event of your death. Have the policy assigned to your partner. There are many ways to achieve this. Any good agent would be happy to give you a free consultation.

Answer 3

Talk to your accountant and attorney about corporate protections.  From an insurance standpoint, you should consider disability income protection and health insurance with an unlimited lifetime benefit instead of just $1mm.  Depending on how long you've been developing, disability might be hard to come by, so find an insurance broker who specializes in this.

Answer 4

Well, the best way is to carry health insurance, disability coverage, and long term care coverage.  

You could try to transfer the assets out of your name - but then they aren't yours any more.

Bottom line - you're asking, how you can get services and not pay for them?  How, maybe, you can get all the honest taxpayers to pay for YOUR care, because you don't want to?  Dude.  Money is there to take care of you and your family.  That's the only purpose it has.  You want to cheat the hospital out of payment.  That's not honest, it's a form of stealing.

Answer 5

Many people establish a combination of revocable living trusts and LLCs or L.P.s to provide such protection.  These are legal entities that are not "you".  Therefore, the hospital or other creditors have many difficult barriers to go through in order to seize those assets.  If you are of high net worth, I highly recommend you see an attorney to help you establish these entities and transfer some of all of your ownership interests into them.  If the attorney is any good, he'll have a creative way to structure your assets in such a way as to adequately protect you from these problems.