To maximize the value of the assets you pass down when the time comes, your estate plan should include tools and strategies that actively protect and grow your assets while you are alive. To do that, you need to recognize potential threats to your assets. A Grand Forks asset protection attorney at German Law explains how to protect your assets from marriage and divorce. How Can Divorce Threaten My Assets? Unfortunately, the divorce rate for first marriages in the United States has hovered … [Read more...] about How to Protect Your Assets from Marriage and Divorce

Over the course of your lifetime, you will likely work hard and invest wisely in an effort to amass a respectable asset portfolio. If all goes well, you will have sufficient assets to live comfortably during your retirement years with something left over to pass down to your children and/or grandchildren. While acquiring assets is certainly important, protecting those assets should be of equal importance. An asset protection lawyer can help you protect your estate assets using a variety of asset … [Read more...] about What Does an Asset Protection Lawyer Do?

If you are fortunate enough to be able to gift assets to loved ones, either during your lifetime or after you are gone, you undoubtedly hope that those assets will be appreciated and protected. Unfortunately, that is not always what happens. The Grand Forks asset protection attorneys at German Law warn about the squandering beneficiary. The good news is that with careful estate planning a squandering beneficiary cannot squander too much of your assets! Gifting Basics For many people, one of … [Read more...] about Beware the Squandering Beneficiary

At the heart of any well thought out estate plan should be a roadmap for the distribution of estate assets to loved ones upon the death of the individual creating the plan. Your plan, for example, likely includes a Last Will and Testament as the foundation from which additional estate planning tools and strategies have grown over the years. As your estate has grown and increased in value, you have probably updated and revised your estate plan to account for that growth. At some point in time, … [Read more...] about How Does an Asset Protection Trust Work?

Estate planning, when done correctly, should be comprehensive in nature. As such, your estate plan should cover a number of inter-related goals and objectives all in one cohesive plan. One estate planning component you will likely want to consider as you get older is Medicaid planning. One reason you may need to include Medicaid planning in your estate plan is that eligibility for benefits depends, in part, on the value of your “countable resources.”  To ensure that you understand the need for … [Read more...] about Explaining “Countable Resources”

A well thought out estate plan should do much more than simply create a roadmap for the distribution of your estate assets when you are gone. In order to ensure that there are assets left to distribute when you are gone, your plan should also focus on protecting and growing your assets while you are alive as well. To do that, asset protection should be included as a primary objective within your plan. As is always the case, the best way to be certain that your assets are properly protected is to … [Read more...] about Asset Protection Tips

For most people, at least part of the purpose of creating an estate plan is to ensure that their estate assets are available to provide for loved ones after they are gone. Of course, in order for your estate assets to provide for loved ones in your absence, you need to protect those assets while you are still here. With that in mind, you may choose to include asset protection strategies in your comprehensive estate plan. Because no two estates include the same assets or the same potential … [Read more...] about 3 Common Asset Protection Strategies