The Best Estate Planning Option For Shielding Your Asset From Creditors

You can develop an estate plan that shields your assets from creditors. By doing so, you can protect your most valuable assets from the parties who would like to claim them, allowing them to go to your beneficiaries.

Going over the best estate planning option for shielding your asset from creditors, and speaking with an estate planning lawyer, will allow you to protect your estate.

What Does It Mean To Shield Your Assets From Creditors? 

Right after a person passes away, their estate can go through probate, depending on their estate plan. By going through probate, any creditors who are owed money/assets from the estate, can obtain what they are owed.

You can protect your assets from probate. Just as you can protect your assets from any creditors who wish to obtain these assets, thereby taking them away from your chosen beneficiaries.

If you do not take the necessary measures to shield your assets from creditors, then the parties you may owe assets to can, and will, take certain assets from your estate. And, if this happens, then your beneficiaries may be unable to receive some of the assets that you have chosen to give them.

Just as an example of the above, if you would like to give your daughter a car, but you owe money to a creditor, then there is a chance this car could be taken to pay off the creditor.

What Is The Best Estate Planning Option For Shielding Your Asset From Creditors? 

The best estate planning option for shielding your asset from creditors is as follows: an irrevocable trust.

An irrevocable trust is a trust that is irrevocable, once it has been developed. This means that you cannot take out the assets within the estate, once the estate has been set up.

If you put a house into the trust then, while you will likely still have access to the house, you cannot take it out of the trust, or modify it with any degree of ease, unless you go through a complex process.

The above applies to any other assets you choose to put into an irrevocable trust. Or, for that matter, things like your chosen beneficiaries and asset transfers; these can be modified, but it’s not easy.

On its own, this may sound challenging. But, irrevocable trusts shield your assets from creditors by preventing those creditors from obtaining access to those assets, since you no longer have direct ownership of them.

Outside of the above, an irrevocable trust also bypasses probate. This means that your beneficiaries can get their assets very quickly, without having to deal with a long probate process and, in turn, the fees associated with it.

Speak With A Florida Estate Planning Attorney Today 

If you would like to set up an irrevocable trust, so that you can shield your assets from creditors, then it is of the utmost importance that you obtain the appropriate legal assistance.

Speak with a Florida estate planning attorney at Millhorn Elder Law Planning Group and we will go over your estate planning wishes, allowing you to develop the estate plan that is right for you.

 Sources:

law.cornell.edu/wex/creditor

law.cornell.edu/wex/irrevocable_trust