Wealth Protection Planning

Wealth protection planning, sometimes known as asset protection, attempts to answer some of the most important questions faced by professionals and business owners, "How do I limit the exposure of my business and personal assets to the risks of my business?" or, "If something goes wrong with my business or practice, how do I protect my home and savings from liability?”  The attorneys in Turner Padget’s Wealth Protection Planning Practice Group work with clients to answer these and other similar questions.

Our team has worked with clients from diverse backgrounds and all levels of affluence to successfully, and ethically, protect and preserve their wealth and assets.  In some instances we have helped protect family assets passed down through many generations.  In other instances we have helped clients protect a “nest egg” for their retirement or provide for their children’s or grandchildren’s education.

Today, in these financially difficult times, individuals may have even more reasons for concern about the protection and preservation of assets.  Working in concert with your accountant, or other financial advisor, Turner Padget can help perform a risk analysis of your assets.  We analyze your current holdings and liabilities and assess the likelihood and impact of future exposure, in light of your existing business ventures, occupation, and other liabilities.  Often our wealth protection planning takes the form of “integrated estate planning” where we not only consider your asset protection planning needs, but we coordinate the solutions to those needs with strategies that are beneficial to a comprehensive estate plan.  Your plan may consist of several components such as pre-nuptial or post-nuptial agreements; re-titling assets; domestic or foreign (“off shore”) asset protection trusts; limited partnerships or limited liability companies formed in jurisdictions such as Alaska or Delaware, family savings trusts, and privacy plans.

At Turner Padget, we offer a personalized approach to your wealth protection planning needs.  We guide our clients step by step, informing and educating them on all of the available options so that well reasoned decisions can be made throughout the process.  The Turner Padget attorneys practicing in this area all have advanced degrees in taxation and most are certified specialists by the Supreme Court of the State of South Carolina.  This expertise and their experience are invaluable when working to structure and implement the complex and sophisticated strategies utilized in wealth protection planning.           

We serve our clients in the following areas:

  • Business Entity Planning
  • Tax Planning and Controversies
  • Wills Trusts and Estates

Experience

  • Designed and implemented a wealth protection plan to safeguard significant wealth accumulated by the spouse of a physician who was engaged in a high-risk specialty practice.  The plan consisted of the creation of a Delaware limited liability company and a domestic asset protection trust (organized under Delaware law) and the funding of the plan with selected real property and liquid assets.
  • Assisted a large contractor in designing and implementing a comprehensive estate and asset preservation plan using Family Limited Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies and a Delaware Trust to which family assets were transferred.  A later suit against the client as guarantor of a bank note was successfully settled without any recourse to the family property.
  • Worked with numerous clients to re-title assets to utilize protected forms of ownership.
  • Negotiated and drafted numerous prenuptial and postnuptial agreements.