You have spent your entire life building something. A career. A family. A life. It is something that is precious and something that you need to protect, and when it comes to protecting your wealth from things like frivolous lawsuits, you should take every precaution available, including offshore asset protection.
Offshore asset protection is a way to take your hard-earned wealth and place it in a protective bubble. It can ensure that your money stays safe and appreciates all at the same time. Despite its many benefits, however, offshore asset protection is most effective with a lot of knowledge and experience. Here are just a few insights into offshore asset protection to help you see if it is the right course of action for you and your wealth.
1. Offshore Asset Protection Can be Expensive When Done Incorrectly
Between old regulations and new, the ways in which people can rely on offshore asset protection has completely changed, and it continues to change every year. Keeping ahead of the paperwork, roadblocks, red tape, and procedures is a full-time job meant for dedicated, talented experts.
2. Get Ahead of the Situation
Offshore asset protection is about one thing above everything else: careful planning. It is absolutely paramount that steps are taken long before anything happens, whether it is frivolous lawsuits, untrue claims to your wealth, or anything else that threatens to take away your hard-earned money. If you end up in a situation where your assets are vulnerable when legal action is presented, you cannot move your assets into offshore protection. But if they are already there, then the legal action will have a hard time accessing those funds and valuables.
3. Get Insurance
Offshore asset protection is not insurance, nor is it a viable replacement for insurance. Asset protection is a way of protecting your money by moving it to places where American governments, people, and companies cannot reach it without major legal jurisdiction issues. Insurance is money provided to you in the event of liability, damages, or acts of God. Conflating one with the other will leave you vulnerable and potentially owing large amounts of money if something goes wrong. So always ensure that your offshore asset protection plan also includes insurance.
4. Trust the Experts
As rules and regulations change every year, especially as new tax bills are passed, the effectiveness of offshore asset protection becomes more and more specialized. Attempting to do it all alone is extremely risky, both in terms of being able to access your assets and ensuring that they do not bleed out from fees, alternative taxes, and other ways of making the money slowly, painfully disappear. An expert who fully understands your situation will be able to make the best, most effective plan for your assets and wealth, ensuring that your money is safe and secure from those who would seek to take it.
5. Be Honest
Since an expert is your best bet, it also stands to reason that your best plan will be one in which your offshore asset protection team understands the entirety of your holdings. Since the effectiveness of your offshore protection plan depends on a thorough understanding of your assets, leaving anything out can jeopardize that good work, or it can even make you noncompliant in the eyes of the IRS. This is why being open and honest with your team is an absolutely essential aspect of protecting your wealth overseas.
6. Understand What Money can be Repatriated
In 1995, a corporate lawyer by the name of H. Beatty Chadwick was sent to prison for fourteen years because he refused to move money from overseas back home to pay alimony to his ex-wife. While technically not being sentences to prison, and instead being held in contempt of court, the case made more people aware of how debt can be “repatriated” back to the States to pay outstanding balances. Understanding what money you hold overseas, where, and how it can be forced back into the States is key to discovering how to effectively hold your money and assets overseas.
Offshore asset protection is a powerful tool for keeping your hard-earned money safe. Its effectiveness, however, is dependent on a few factors: honesty, openness, and savvy. While you can put your money into offshore protection on your own, it is rarely effective without the knowledge and expertise of a professional and experienced offshore asset protection specialists. That is why your best bet is to call the professionals and let them create a strategy that’s right for you.