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What Are Asset Protection Trusts?

Friday, January 10, 2014

By Marissa Velazquez


Asset protection trusts can be termed as intentionally defective grantor schemes. This means that they treat the assets in the trust in a different way for income tax purposes unlike for estate and gift tax purposes. The veteran in this case will not be the beneficially but a grantor.

In most cases, the residence or home of the veteran is usually his main asset. As long as he retains the home, it does not get included in his net worth administration eligibility. This is to say that it does not get counted as a resource if he were to qualify for the monthly pension benefit and sells it, the proceeds would automatically cut him off from the pension benefit scheme. This would be the case until he has spent down to an allowable asset level.

People have often established a living revocable trust thinking that they are creating an asset protection trust. This is not the case though for the revocable trusts. The fact that it is revocable means that if the grantor is sued, it will not protect the assets. It does not matter whether it was a family, a land or a living trust.

This is not the case though when dealing with the irrevocable ones. Unlike the revocable trust, this type of trusts can protect assets if the grantor is sued. It becomes some sort of asset protecting schemes but it is important to note that once you have established it and then move your assets there, they seize to be yours from then on. This means they are gone for good and you cannot get them back.

There is a special kind of schemes called the asset protection trust. States are now signing laws which create them. They offer protection to the assets and the holdings are retained for many centuries. Major tax advantages come along with this. Alaska was the first to create it and it had its reasons for doing so.

All the states that created this scheme did it to have a source of new investment and they allowed its formation as it protected the assets. Alaska was aiming to bring in money from other states into its own banking industry. The shield they offered drove outside investors into the state and they brought a lot of money with them. All states that followed suite did it to achieve this as well.

This benefit is however enjoyed by outsiders and people from the state in which the trust is authorized do not enjoy it. This is because the main aim of the states was to bring in money from other states into its own banks. Other states had to invent something unique to encourage people to invest in them.

People are reluctant though to take up these asset protection trusts. They fear giving up their property in accordance to how the states that have taken up these laws want them to. They argue that a limited liability company with a living revocable trust could provide the same benefits. For interested parties, it would be advisable to first get all the facts right before taking any action.




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