Asset Protection

[Sarah Jones]

I own two houses, one is rental and one I live in. I hit a girl on a bike 6 months ago. She got a lawyer and the lawyer at first wrote a letter to my insurance company saying they will accept the policy limit, but after we told her the policy was $15k, she now says she will not accept. She is asking $200k which is redicolous. She is fine. She had knee surgury before and she says now becuase of the way the accident happen she needs knee surgery again. There is video at the corner of the stop light that showed the whole accident.

$200k is just ridiocous for a girl that was able to walk and everything.

To cut to the point, I need to know how to protect the two houses. Should I put them in an LLC or trust or what should i do at this point. How can i protect the two houses and how much would it normally cost.

Thanks

[Pat Marco]

I am not sure why several people here wrote that you should've had your assets in LLCs. I am an attorney and have sued people successfully and went after their LLCs assets because they had plenty of equity (and of course that was beyond their insurance)

Hindsight is 20/20 but I want to be clear that instead of placing each one of the properties in a separate LLC (which would've cost you a lot of money and hassles) I should've stripped the equity by placing a special kind of lien against the equity of each property. There is a way to do that with legal reason and the liens are to your own LLC (just one LLC entity in WY that can strip the equity of all your portfolio making it impossible for anyone to collect anything beyond your $15k low coverage which should've been a lot more than that and you know it!)

By the way the structure I am writing about here keeps you in full control and you do not need to transfer assets, since we just record the liens against them.

I am not soliciting your business because if we do this for you now, there is a 50/50 chance the plaintiff's attorney will complain to the court that the liens were placed after the lawsuit had been initiated.

All you can do now (and this is not a specific advise since I do not have all the facts and am not handling your case) is try to reason with them by playing the poor old boy card!