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Commonly Used Structures • residence trusts • limited liability companies • limited partnerships • equity strips • sale to a friendly third party • outright sale |
Protecting Your Financial Investments
Your investments are your future. But years of careful financial planning and asset-building can fall to pieces without proper protection. Complex legal systems that create confusion make planning vital. Our knowledge of those complexities can save you years of frustration and pain. Designing protection for your investments now can mean a more peaceful and secure future.
A Case History: In the Wake of Enron
The board member of a publicly traded company found just how dramatically the Sarbanes-Oxley law and the events of Enron have changed the business world. Even though his company was being cleanly run, with the new business environment he was concerned that he was still exposed to significant personal risk.
Because there was no way to insulate him from personal liability under Sarbanes-Oxley, the focus of our planning was on protecting his assets, principally his family home and an investment account.
His family had been residing in their house for the past ninety years and the prospect of losing it was unbearable. The first step in our protection planning was to transfer ownership of the home to his wife as her sole and separate property. She then contributed the home to an irrevocable trust. This structure afforded an insurmountable level of protection for liabilities directed against him, and even provided a significant level of protection against any liabilities that his wife could face.
To protect his investment account, we showed him two primary options: transfer the ownership of the account to either a limited liability company or to a foreign trust. To maximize the protection of the account, he opted to transfer the ownership to an irrevocable trust governed by the laws of New Zealand.