Asset Protection - Tax and Financial Aspects

Course Description:

This informative course covers traditional planning tools and their utilization to protect assets. The Uniform Fraudulent Conveyance Act, the Bankruptcy Code, and various aspects of the tax law are highlighted in describing asset protection aspects of corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, family partnerships, trusts, retirement plans, insurance products, and other conventional tools. Special topics include protection against lawsuits, costs of long-term illness, divorce settlements, foreign asset protection trusts, statutory protections, homestead provisions, exempt assets, cancellation of indebtedness taxation, and marital agreements.

Learning Objectives:

Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Specify the goals and purposes of asset protection, the objections some people have about shielding assets from creditors, and reasons for asset protection.
• Identify situations that put assets and financial security at stake and the common sources of lawsuits, recognize the dual concepts of liability, and determine the asset protection concepts of insurance, asset placement, and statutory protections.
• Specify the types of creditors associated with asset protection and fraudulent transfers, recognizing their salient characteristics and identify the fraudulent transfer provisions, badges of fraud, statutes of limitation, and potential criminal penalties.
• Determine net worth using a balance sheet, identify asset values, and show the preparation of a balance sheet in the context of determining the depth and scope of suitable asset protection planning.
• Identify characteristics of homeowners, automobile, and disability insurance and what asset protection they may offer.
• Specify persons in whom rights are placed by life insurance and reasons to purchase life insurance and the benefits, uses, and types of life insurance, and identify variables that influence when life insurance is taxable.
• Determine what constitutes an annuity and the types and characteristics of annuities, specifying their tax advantages and disadvantages, and recognize the types of buy-sell agreements, recognizing their tax and legal advantages and pitfalls.
• Recognize the ways to hold property and what taxpayers must do before beginning an asset protection program.
• Specify the advantages and disadvantages of using placement entities and titles such as joint tenancy, corporations, trusts, partnerships, LLCs, retirement plans, and custodianship for asset protection purposes.
• Identify the advantages and disadvantages of a limited liability company (LLC) and problems associated with its relatively recent history.
• Recognize how retirement plans can be used to provide substantial lifetime benefits to a business owner and to employees while simultaneously providing asset protection.
• Identify important characteristics of custodianship and estates as asset protection tools.
• Determine how the 2005 Bankruptcy Act changed procedures, identify the most common bankruptcy types and their filing requirements,  specify the rules for automatic stay, and identify preferential payments specifying the priority of creditor claims.
• Specify debts covered under homesteading, and determine permissible garnishment amounts recognizing special garnishment rules.
• Recognize the effect that debt cancellation has on net worth and potential income inclusion from cancellation of indebtedness income, and specify exceptions to the general income inclusion rule and their tax impact.
• Identify tax attribute reductions and their application when reducing canceled debt and recognize the depreciable property election in reducing the basis of depreciable property before reducing any other tax attributes.
• Determine gain or loss resulting from foreclosure or repossession, identifying reporting and filing requirements, specify the timing and character of the gain or loss, and cite the hidden income tax danger when acquiring one's own debt at a discount.
• Identify the formats that courts typically follow if a couple does not have a marital agreement, including how search agreements relate to divorce settlements and divisions.
• Determine the application of  §1041 to interspousal transfers and the transferor’s and transferee’s property basis under §1041(b).
• Specify the application of §1041 to selected business, retirement, and investment assets and identify the elements of a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO).
• Specify the tools to manage an incompetent person’s estate, including powers of attorney, trusts, and conservatorship.
• Determine eldercare benefits of Medicare and Medicaid, identify possible health care decisions such as having a power of attorney for health care, and recognize distinctions between Supplemental Security Income and Social Security disability benefits.