Protecting Your Personal Assets

[Shaun Reilly]

I read a lot about the need to protect your personal assets if you own rentals or from your business activities.

My question is... Who has personal assets that are worth worrying about protecting?

If anything I want to segregate things in case I personally get sued to protect all the stuff my entities own!

In reality I will guess that for the most part the people here are newbies that just don't have any assets anyway. Still good to have the right stuff in place early on, but shouldn't be anything to stop you from getting started.

If not people will have a lot of business assets that make up the majority of their net worth. I know personally if you take away the equity and cash in my flipping business and the cash and equity in my rentals I don't really have all that much!

I will guess that like me most of people personal assets of note are a personal residence and retirement counts. I can Homestead my home to protect it for many times the actual equity I have. Retirement accounts are already off limits (Think OJ).

Not dissing asset protection but I think most people think about it backwards. The business stuff being protected from YOUR liability is probably the more important use of the benefits.

[Pat L.]

Not exactly a RE issue

BUT

A friend's son has a judgement against them for over $2mill.

They were young & had nothing to lose AT THE TIME.

Now he can't own ANYTHING without fear of it being attached, & every time he gets paid there is a % garnishee. He was also been advised NOT to get married as her wages etc would also be fair game.

& all he did was lend his auto to a friend who drove drunk then wrecked it causing significant injuries to the passengers. In fact one was rendered blind as a result of the accident.

'govern yourself accordingly'