WOW! lots of great info and arguments. I definitely will be talking to lawyer/accountant to figure out what needs to be in place. From my perspective as someone who has absolutely no clue what is going on I will say this. biggerpockets.com/show109 I have listened to it at least 5 times. Its all about asset protection. So as of now I can only go off of common sense when it comes to all of this. I think the bottom line for me is this... wealthy people don't own property and assets, wealth people manage property and assets. I am not wealth but I want to be some day. Insurance is a no brainier for me. I have tons of it personally and professionally. If and when I die someone is going to be financially set (my children). I like to try and tie the two things together in order to make some kind of sense out of it. As I research wills, trusts, death gratuity, etc... I find there is a lot of crap involved in probate. I see this as a red tape of sorts where people have to go through litigation and court processes and city processes and county processes just to go through a will that says everything belongs to so and so. I do not want to put my family through all of this when I die. I want them to get all of the stuff and be done with it. From what I can find putting control of all the assets in a trust and then a carry over will for the remaining questionable stuff (just a blanket whatever is not covered in the trust already should go to ______). All of this being said I have seen some pretty ugly battles in and out of courts and through litigation over estates and such. So, starting with the end in mind and working my way back to the starting point I want to completely protect all of my stuff no matter how little the value of it from as much as possible. Insurance protects specific things. People, cars, boats, houses, rental properties, etc. Insurance companies jobs are to collect premiums and avoid payouts or minimize them as much as possible. I am pretty sure insurance companies do not handle court proceedings but I could be wrong. Asset protection is my key goal when trying to build wealth. As many layers as I can put in I am going to do so. I can see justifying spending a couple thousand to set up proper business entity just so that it will for sure separate my personal liability vs my income cashflow producing business liability. I think it makes total sense to put every single property under some sort of business entity. Furthermore I think it is even smarter to put the holding of assets inside of a trust (buy and hold is where I am coming from with this discussion). I want nothing to be directly in my name on the business side. If someone wants to sue my company cool... I will make damn sure that they are only suing that one particular company and not able to peek into my personal assets whether house or boat or car or whatever. Ambiguity is not to avoid anything or to try to be non negligible. It is to protect your family and your personal stuff. If I own Apple and some Apple product blows up in someones hand... that person could come directly to me as the owner and try to take everything I have if the business protections are not set in place as they should be. No amount of insurance is going to change that fact.A business is a business is a business. I have seen plenty of businesses in my own family be not protected and it is a scary place to be in when at any moment someone can come in and take everything out from under you...and then take all of your personal assets as well. Not to make this an hour long post but I will say this. Mother nature laughs last. Mother nature has not read the declaration of independence or the bill of rights. She does not care what protection you have or dont have. If you dont do due diligence and take care of yourself and your stuff, nobody else will. A business is a business no matter how small or large. It should be run as such.
