Oh Good, the Government is Here to Help

Now is the Time to Develop your own Asset Protection Plan Before it’s too Late

This week I want to stress the importance of developing your own asset protection plan now as opposed to later when it can potentially be too late.  In last week’s article, “Svetlana Takes Victor to the Cleaners”, we discussed Victor’s problems and how they could have been avoided if he had set the structure in place before his divorce.

For the past couple of days, I have been working with 2 clients who also wished they had a properly structured asset protection plan in place before they were sued.  I won’t get into the details, but Susan and Frank now have a $1.4M judgment against them in relation to a real estate deal that unexpectedly went bad.

I got the call earlier this week from Susan who explained the issues to me.  Basically there were some major, undisclosed problems with the property as well as partnership issues.  This lead to a default and foreclosure on the property giving them a total loss of several hundred thousand dollars.

Now Susan and Frank are looking at a $1.4M judgment which will completely bankrupt them both.  They had been working with lawyers who misguided them through this process and gave them bad advice.  Of course the lawyers can walk away happily with their fees while Susan and Frank are looking at financial destruction.

All hope is not lost here as we are working on an asset protection plan to help them salvage some of their wealth, but this would have been much easier, cheaper, and less risky had it been done one year ago.  Of course one year ago, Susan and Frank thought they were operating risk free.  Are you operating risk free?  Are you sure?

Of course potential future litigation is but one threat to your wealth.  In reality, the government is most likely your biggest threat.

Just this week, an article by Federal News Radio titled, “Library of Congress to Receive Entire Twitter Archive” was published discussing Twitter’s decision to release all old Tweets from all public users.

The privacy of the American people is rapidly deteriorating.  From last week’s article you may remember that the Senate recently passed a bill allowing the military to detain and imprison American citizens both in the US and abroad without trial for ‘suspicious activity’.

Now the Federal government is going to be privy to all of your Tweets including all of the previous years’ messages.  At what point does this madness end?

Much like the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on terror’, these new measures are sold to the public with the message of protection of the American people.  In reality, it is nothing more than another power grab meant to criminalize normal behavior allowing the government to enslave and impoverish the American people while the ruling class (politicians) gets to live high on the hog.

This destruction of privacy allows the government another way to tap into your private and business communications looking for signs of ‘suspicious’ activity.  Quite frankly, if you follow me on Twitter (@gwpro) you have read articles about offshore banking, offshore companies, tax minimization and other topics that could already be construed as ‘suspicious activity’.

Considering the vagueness of the ‘destruction of privacy agenda’, who’s to say that you aren’t already being watched?  Normally I try to be positive and optimistic about the future, but this news story about Twitter really scares me.

I hope you don’t just dismiss this and think, “Oh good, the government is here to help”.  Now is the time to develop your own offshore asset protection plan.  At a minimum, you need to have an offshore bank account.  This would allow you to keep a portion of your cash outside the reach of US jurisdiction.

Consider this your starter kit towards developing your own ‘Escape Hatch’.  If you are unaware, you should know that under the Patriot Act, the government has the ability to freeze all of your US bank accounts without due process or even charging you with a crime for nothing more than ‘suspicious activity’.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that any of you would have concern over this, but it only takes one wrong move and voila, you lose access to your money.  Considering there is no downside to having an offshore bank account, this is an easy low-cost way to begin your own offshore asset protection plan.