- Hey guys, Clint Coons here
and in this video, we're going to talk about,
how do you protect assets other than real estate,
personal assets?
All right, let's get started.
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Okay, so let me just give you some backstory here.
A number of years ago, one of our legal secretaries
in our office came to me with this issue.
She was woken up on a Saturday morning
at seven o'clock with someone just beating on the door.
She goes downstairs, opens the door,
and here's this woman who was just rabid, angry,
and demanding that she turn over all
of my employee's vehicles.
So my employee had a couple of cars, had a trailer,
a boat, and she's standing there
and she says, "Give me those vehicles.
They belong to me."
She's looking at her saying, "You're crazy."
She goes, "Those are mine."
She goes, "No, I'm not, look it.
I have titles for all of those vehicles."
And sure enough, she had a title for her boat,
her trailer and her vehicles.
Now what had happened, this individual who was deranged,
found my employee's information,
was able to go on to the DMV
and transfer title over to herself.
So she was able to take what she found
and then turn that into her own personal assets
on the public records by having certain information
that is publicly available.
Now, this was a concern
and we got it all straightened out, of course,
got the titles cleared up, but what we did then,
after the fact is we held title going forwards
in a different way, in which when my employees,
should you ever be in that situation again,
if it's a crazy person out there trying to take from her,
they're never going to know that she owns these assets
because they're no longer titled in her name.
And this is what it takes when you want
to protect personal property that you own
that's a titleable asset.
In order to gain protection for it,
you have to get it out of your name.
And the best tool to utilize
for this type of protection is what I refer
to as a personal property trust.
Now, personal property trust is a trust that you set up.
It's similar to a, think of it like a land trust, okay?
You got to come up with a name for it.
So we can call this one, the You Don't Want This Trust.
All right?
So that's the name of your trust,
You Don't Want This Trust.
And of course you have to have a trustee for that trust,
so it can be you, it could be an LLC that you set up
that gives you, of course anonymity,
wouldn't want to use yourself, but you could be you.
But anyways, you've got to come up with a name
for the trust and then you have, you choose a trustee.
Could be a nominee trustee,
I've served as a nominee trustee before
in these types of trusts.
Now the personal property trust is like the land trust
in that you're going to be the beneficiary down here,
of this trust and then you would be the successor's trustee
if you're using a nominee trustee over here
or possible you've got a Wyoming LLC that you set
up as your trustee that you control.
So whatever the case is, this is the basic nature of it.
So this entity gets set up
and now what you'll do is you'll change the title
to Personal Property Assets, so for example, you got a car.
You want that car out of your name,
so no one knows on the DMV who owns it,
put it in your Personal Property Trust,
You Don't Want This Trust,
that's what's going to go on title.
If you have a boat that you don't want somebody to know
that you own, put your boat inside of that trust.
RVs can go inside of this trust as well.
So with the personal property trusts,
they're designed to hold personal property.
Now, what about your checking account?
Should you use this trust for your checking account?
You could, I would probably set up a second trust
for my personal checking account.
So now you create this personal property trust over here
and you put your checking account into it.
When you go down, I just actually opened
up a trust account the other day
with Chase Bank and I set it up,
again, it didn't have my name on it.
I came up with an obscure name for it
and when we opened up the account, he asked me,
he goes, "Well, how do you want your checks to read?"
And I said, "Well, put the checks in my name."
But for title holding purposes, that is not,
the account is not in my name.
It's in the name of this trust.
You know, You Don't Want This Trust
is what it would be called.
So now my checking account's held there.
Why would I want to do that?
Well one, potential fraud.
If somebody gets your personal information
and wants to the steal your identity
and they can try to find any accounts that are in your name.
Well, that's no longer in your name.
It's in a trust name.
If you get a personal judgment against you
and an individual wants to take that judgment
and they figured out, "Hey, they saw your checks,
that you bank at Chase Bank or Wells Fargo
or Bank of America."
And they go down there to record the judgment,
what is it referred to as a writ of garnishment,
and they go after your account,
well, the account's not in your name.
They have a judgment against you, not against your trust,
so they can't get after your personal checking,
your personal savings that are held
in this trust with that writ of garnishment
that they have on you individually.
So when it comes to personal assets,
setting up these trusts, all you're doing is removing title
from your name.
What about from a tax standpoint?
Okay, they're all disregarded.
There is no tax issue with these trusts, okay?
Whenever you open up the accounts
and they ask you who's taxpayer identification number,
not the trust, your social security number,
so taxes are irrelevant, everything,
it's like you still own them.
What about asset protection?
Because I get this a lot.
People will put comments on my videos.
They said, "Well, Clint,
I don't understand the asset protection here.
If you say, if I get sued they can take my assets
with a personal property trust."
Absolutely they can, meaning this,
that if they force you into a debtor's exam
and bring you in and they're going after your assets
and they tell you
to describe every trust you're a beneficiary on,
remember these trusts are grantor trust.
They offer zero asset protection from predators, none.
If you have an aggressive creditor that wants
to pull you through that procedure,
they're gonna find out about these assets.
They're gonna be able to go after them.
So then why am I telling you this offers asset protection,
you might be wondering,
because a lot of people don't go that far
when they're suing people.
They get a judgment against them
and then they try to find the assets that are held
in their name, just by recording the judgment
in the county and hoping it sticks
or they file a writ of garnishment with the bank,
hoping you have an account there.
They don't go to supplemental proceedings
and go through a debtor's exam.
So from an asset protection standpoint,
it keeps your name off of the title.
So those little sticky types of judgements
that people come after you with,
just by doing the simple recording won't attach to this.
It also keeps the assets out of your name,
so people don't know what you have.
If they did an asset search,
and they're trying to determine, do you own any vehicles?
What are the VIN numbers on them?
Now you've got them out of your name,
it won't pop there, so think of it as a smoke screen.
You can't sue what you can't see
or you can't take what you don't know they have.
And this is what we're doing.
It'll never protect you against aggressive creditors
that take you to that nth degree,
but fortunately for us, most people don't go there
cause it's not worth the cost for them.
They go for the lowest hanging fruit.
You got a choice.
You want to be the lowest hanging fruit.
Keep it all in your name.
If you want to do something simple,
use a Personal Property Trust.
It's a very inexpensive way to get your name
off of title for your personal assets.
All right, guys, take care.
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