1998 You accumulated sizable estate assets and your lawyer created an irrevocable dynasty trust for your infant son to protect his legacy and provide him a long-term financial safety net. You were a thoughtful and loving parent. 2018 A lot has happened over the past 20 years. The business world has changed and the path to independent adulthood lies obscured in your son’s generation’s new definition of success: do what […]

(And once you realize what you didn’t know, well, it may be too late.) Sara and Jonah Williams worked for over 30 years to build their fledgling business into a thriving franchise with stores throughout the nation. They thought they were protected by their thorough estate planning until the unthinkable happened. They were sued by a plaintiff seeking to recover millions of dollars in an unforeseen lawsuit. The Williams contacted […]

Asset protection planning for affluent individuals has been around since the mid-1980s. But businesses get sued, too. Yet, when you ask C-suite executives what they’re doing to protect their company’s assets from lawsuits, you mostly get a blank stare and the common response of “nothing.” Businesses are continuously plagued by class action lawsuits in which plaintiff’s lawyers look to pile on a community of individual plaintiffs to scare the company […]

Generosity and philanthropy create happiness according to Harvard professor, Michael Norton. In his TedX Talk, “How to Buy Happiness”, Dr. Norton expands on the research which supports the notion that spending money on others makes people happier than spending it on themselves.  But there are a variety of best practices to do so in philanthropy. These days, a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) has become one of the simplest and most […]

Life is full of little surprises. Wondering whether your retirement plan is “bullet proof” from future lawsuits and bankruptcy should not be one of them. Imagine this… You’ve worked your entire life to build a successful business reinvesting into your company all along. Your long-term plan was to sell the company when you turned 60 to retire to a life of leisure, living on the proceeds. Then disaster strikes. You […]

Mike’s lifelong dream of building his own house was about to come true. After years of searching, Mike found the perfect tear-down on an amazing lot with views to die for. He worked closely with an architect to design a show-stopping, LEED-certified house that would boast everything from a wine cellar to a sauna in the master bath. It even had the perfect reading spot for his favorite hammock. What […]

Despite all of the advances women have made in recent years when it comes to saving for retirement, women still lag behind men. Financial planners report that women often have a lower risk tolerance than men so they earn less on their investments. Women have a longer life expectancy and need more income to last through retirement. And generally speaking, women shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibility caring for significant […]

Alaska was the first state to adopt what is commonly known as asset protection trust legislation in 1997.  This was done to compete with the myriad of overseas jurisdictions offering opportunities for U.S. residents to create a special type of trust to protect the assets placed in the trust from a future financially ruinous unforeseen lawsuit filed against him or her.  What we didn’t know for sure was whether the […]

Sara and Jonah Williams worked for over 30-years building their fledgling business into a thriving franchise with stores throughout the nation. They hadn’t anticipated an unexpected and overly litigious lawsuit in which they were sued for millions of dollars. Fortunately for the Williams, they planned for the unexpected by combining the fusion of intelligent planning with asset protection. Over the years this protection made certain they paid the least amount […]

After a long day at his successful hotel linen service business, Larry came home and shared with his wife, “They called again.”   “Why are we still thinking about this?  Sell.  Take the money.  We can retire in comfort now,” she said.    Larry built his business with sweat and blood, amassing a huge client base, a fleet of trucks, and enough linens to stock half the hotels in Las […]