GOAL! The Financial Physician's Ultimate Survival Guide for the Professional Athlete. Mitch Ph.D. Levin
The following is the recommended asset protection plan using LLCs.
| Title | |
| Personal residence | Tenants by the Entireties |
Not typically in an LLC due to the fact that the client will eventually sell the house and will want to take advantage of the $500,000 joint capital gains tax credit.
| Vacation Home | LLC #1 |
If the clients choose to rent the vacation home, we would suggest transferring the vacation home to its own individual LLC to protect it from a suit for negligence by a tenant.
| Brokerage Account | LLC #1 |
Again, if the vacation home were ever rented, the brokerage account would get its own LLC.
| 401(k)/Profit Sharing | Qualified retirement money is federally protected |
Where to Incorporate. Most states do not have the magic language (that a charging order is the “sole” remedy of a creditor) in their state LLC or FLP statutes. Because of this, you will want to use LLC/FLPs filed in states like AK, DE, AZ, NM, NV, and a few others that have this magic language in their statutes.
Trusts as Asset Protection Tools. The general rule of thumb is: Unless a domestic trust is irrevocable, it provides NO asset protection!
That means the revocable living or marital trusts (names used interchangeably) you setup and fund for estate planning purposes provide no asset protection.
Irrevocable trusts on the other hand provide complete asset protection when setup and funded correctly. The problem with irrevocable trusts is that you have to give your money away for them to work and most athletes will not want to use them as a primary asset protection tool.
Domestic asset protection trusts (also known as self settled trusts, AK, DE, NV asset protection trusts) are fairly new tools that have not, to date, been tested. They are basically irrevocable trust setup for your own benefit. In my opinion they are against public policy and until they are tested and are upheld on appeal, I do not recommend then and I do not recommend you use them as a primary asset protection too.
Offshore Asset Protection Strategies. Because this chapter is a scaled down version of the material I’ve written over the years and because of space constraints, I cannot cover offshore asset protection strategies.
Offshore asset protection is “the best” way to protect liquid (stocks, mutual funds, etc) assets. When done properly no U.S. court, the IRS, or the federal or state government will ever be able to touch your money.
If you’d like to read about the use of international LLC, offshore asset protection trusts, captive insurance companies and other offshore tools, please e-mail me at [email protected] and I’ll forward you my 125 summary for your reading pleasure.
Conclusion/Summary on Asset Protection. I will make this short and to the point: every “athlete” should have an asset protection plan.
In the U.S. today, lawsuits run wild; and “professionals” specifically have the added burden of working in an industry where they can be sued individually.
If you have any substantial assets, then you need asset protection. Most of the time you can use domestic LLCs to own all of the above-stated assets except the IRA (which should be rolled into a Profit Sharing Plan).
Athletes work too hard to get to the point of making significant money and to have it wiped out because their advisors know nothing about asset protection planning would be a travesty.
Whether you have been a successful athlete for many years or whether you are just getting ready to run pro so you can start your professional career, I encourage you to look critically at the team of advisors you surround yourself with.
If you think your agent or a professional athlete management firm knows something about asset protection, you are kidding yourself. After reading this chapter, you already know more about asset protection than every sports agent in the business and 95-99% of the attorneys who represent athletes (either personal attorneys or ones hired and used by management companies).
My hope with this chapter is to arm athletes with enough knowledge so they can determine if they are getting the help needed from their current advisors. If not, then readers should be able to use their new knowledge on asset protection to interview and seek out advisors who have the need skills/knowledge to help them protect their wealth from “all” creditors (remember there are other creditors besides those that arise from negligence lawsuits (like the IRS and the stock market)).
For more information please visit http://www.thewpi.org/
Contact:
Roccy DeFrancesco, Jr, JD, CWPP, CAPP, MMB
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