My name is Garrett Sutton and we're going to be talking about asset protection. This is what you
need to know as you build your businesses, invest in real estate as you grow your assets you need to
protect them at the same time. Another question we commonly get is do I need a bank account for each LLC
and do I need a resident agent for each LLC? And the answer is yes, you need to have a separate
bank account for each LLC. I know there are bank fees involved in all but you really want to have clear
lines of ownership and flow-through of money and I think you really need a separate bank account to
do that. So many banks now you can do everything online so you have one account where you have
the property holding LLC in Oregon for example and you have the Wyoming LLC owning Oregon.
You want to pull money out of the Oregon LLC to...for your purposes. The best way to do that is to have
the Oregon LLC transfer money to the Wyoming LLC, which is technically, the owner of Oregon.
You need to have the money flow from Oregon to Wyoming and then when Wyoming is ready to make
a distribution (and you get make the call it's your LLC) when Wyoming makes a distribution to
you it can transfer the money from the Wyoming LLC to your individual account. That's the proper
way to do it and your accountant and bookkeeper are going to be happy that you're doing it that way
because it's easily accountable, it's the proper way to do it. The other question is do I need a
resident agent? And yes you do. The resident agent is there to accept service of process meaning,
if there's a lawsuit served on you they will go to the resident agent to serve that lawsuit.
You want to have notice of that lawsuit right away because in many states you've got 30 days
to answer. In Nevada you only have 20 days to get an attorney, read the complaint and answer to the
court your position in the case. So the resident agent needs to get that information to you right
away. When we receive service of process at one of our locations we are on the phone immediately
with a client letting them know, so they can get an attorney to represent them in the case and get
an answer on file with the court. Now what can happen if the resident agent doesn't tell you
about this service of process, or, worse yet, you you haven't paid the resident agent and they've
resigned, right, you forgot to pay the resident agent they resign and there's no resident agent
for service. The person suing you can go to court and get notice published in the newspaper instead
of serving you and you'll never see that notice, right, it's in the 2 point type that no one ever reads.
So what you want to do, what can happen in that situation is the person suing you can
get what's called a default judgment. They try to serve the resident agent, they publish notice in
the newspaper, no one answered in which case they can go back to the court and say no one answered
the complaint we'd like a default judgment and the court always grants it so this is something
you have to be very careful with. Now, the resident agent, we charge $125 a year. If you form an entity
with us it's included in the first year so it's all part of the package price but the $125 a year
is just a cost of doing business. If you don't pay that amount you're not going to get notice of the
lawsuit and it's going to be far worse than $125 dollars when you don't get notice of that lawsuit.
So you've got to have a resident agent. Many people think that if I live in the home state I can be my
own resident agent, and that is true with a couple caveats.So let's say you have a Utah LLC and you
live in Utah and you're going to list your home address as the resident agent address. There are a
couple problems. In many states you have to be open from 8 to 5 to be a legitimate resident agent and
if you're not open from 8 to 5 they can say they tried to serve you no one was there. They'll publish
notice and you'll get a default. The other problem is you have people who will look at the address
on Google Maps. They'll see that the owner of this real estate lives in this nice area, you know, and
they're going to be more inclined to sue you in that case. You're much better off paying $125 for
the year and having a nondescript office building with a lot of other resident agents in there as
the home of this LLC. In this day and age I think you want the privacy of using a resident agent
other than yourself. I don't think you want your personal information, your home address, even your
business address out there for these people to see on the internet. So another question we get
is privacy. You know, I want to keep my name off the internet as much as possible and one good feature
of Wyoming is they do not list the managers or members of the LLC on the Secretary of State's website.
So people searching for you, seeing what you have, if they go to the Wyoming of state and
Wyoming Secretary of State's website, they're not going to see your name. And that is valuable asset protection.
We want to keep a low profile these days. Conversely, Nevada does list who the managers
or members are so your name is on the Secretary of State's website. Now we do have a solution for
that and we have a nominee officer who will put their name on the Secretary of State's website
thus keeping your name off it. That service is $650 a year so by using Wyoming which is only $50
a year to the state of Wyoming anyway you have the added benefit of privacy. So that's another
reason why people will use Wyoming. It's only fifty dollars a year, it's got the best strongest asset
protection law in the country, with a couple other states, but, it doesn't list your name on the internet.
I'm often asked what resources are available to people starting a business
or investing in real estate and we offer quite a few. I would encourage you to go to the
CorporateDirect.com website that's CorporateDirect.com We have a lot of articles there. A lot of resources
you can access. As well, you can sign up for the newsletter and we're keeping you informed.
All of our clients are kept informed about key changes in asset protection laws. So we want to make sure
you're up-to-date on what you should be doing to protect yourself and so go to Corporate Direct
look at the site, sign up for the newsletter and I guarantee you'll get some great information