Why Establish an Asset Protection Trust?

If you insure your home, car and health, then why not insure your assets? You may set up an asset protection trust for yourself, family or charity. Your trust can be used to protect assets, anonymously title property or as part of a larger estate plan.

A Wyoming asset protection trust allows you to protect assets without losing control, naming third party beneficiaries or moving assets to an offshore trust. This protects you from lawsuits, creditors, divorces, the government and plain bad luck.

Wyoming trust law is flexible and allows for a variety of trusts. Covered below are some variations and potential applications, e.g. self-settled, dynasty, perpetual and medicaid trusts etc. No matter your goal, our Wyoming trust attorney can help you achieve it. There are no residency requirements and you do not need to visit Wyoming.

Wyoming Trust Benefits

There are several significant benefits to a Wyoming DAPT used in conjunction with a Wyoming LLC:

• Asset Protection: Assets in the DAPT cannot be reached by your creditors after the expiration of certain statutory periods, typically two years.

• Lowers Umbrella Policy Expenditures: The DAPT holds significant assets spun off from your businesses, which provides protection from major claims and lawsuits and makes an insurance policy for these assets unnecessary.

• Principal and Interest Allocation: The DAPT is governed by the Wyoming Principal and Income Allocation Act, which allows under IRC 643 certain sums of money that would otherwise be classified as income to be allocated to the maintenance of principal. This could reduce your tax bill by some 30%.

• Earned vs. Unearned income: Flowing certain income flows through the DAPT would alleviate the reporting of that income as self-earned wages and reduce the amounts paid under FICA, FUTA and SUTA.

• Captive Insurance: This allows you to pay yourself for the risk provided by your insurance company. These payments are tax deductible and are not included within the income of your insurance company. This also allows you to control distributions from the insurance company and to ultimately arbitrate tax bracket differentials.

The combined effects of these strategies could lower your tax liabilities, including payroll taxes, by some 70% or more.

What Assets Can Be Protected?

Assets which can be protected include, but are not limited to:

• Personal Residence or Home

• Rental Properties & Real Estate Investments

• Investment Accounts, e.g. Brokerage Accounts

• Intellectual Property, e.g. Patents & Trademarks

• Bank Accounts, e.g. Checking & Savings

• Holding Companies & Subsidiaries

• Bitcoin, Ethereum & Other Alternative Currencies

• Limited Liability Companies

• Corporations

• Captive Insurance Companies

• Property, Plant & Equipment

• & More

Choosing a Wyoming Trust Company

Every Wyoming irrevocable trust is required to have a trustee. The trustee may be a public trust company service offered by a bank or similar institution. This is also referred to as an independent trustee.

These are generally desirable if a beneficiary, such as your child, is not financially responsible or has a drug problem. In such situations, a public trust company may help your children make wise investment decisions.

Those desiring more privacy or control may act as their own trustee. This is done via a Wyoming LLC which acts as your own personal private trust company (PTC). The PTC is anonymous, controlled by you and reduces costs. This option is discussed in further detail below.

Requirements

The requirements for setting up and maintaining your structure include:

• A Wyoming Domestic Asset Protection Trust (Qualified Spendthrift Trust) is formed by you under Wyoming law.

• There must be at minimum one qualified trustee serving as Trustee.  You may not be a trustee.

• Your trustee can be a Wyoming resident (not-recommended), or trust company (private trust companies are allowed).

• A Single Family Private Trust Company (domiciled in Wyoming) is generally preferred.

• You may remove and replace Trustees as you wish.

• The trust is irrevocable, but modifications can be made, including but not limited to adding and removing beneficiaries and trustees.

• The trust must list beneficiaries. These can include, but are not limited to: you and family, friends, pets and charities.

• The Trustee generally retains the authority to oversee the trust and manage distributions.

• You may, however, act as investment adviser. This allows you to approve, disapprove and direct a Trustee’s actions.

• You may allow or disallow distributions.

• Maintain a registered agent in Wyoming.

Do Wyoming Trusts have any risks?

• Conflicting State Laws: Every state’s trust laws are different. There are states which do not allow self-settled anti-creditor trusts, or do not have as beneficial of terms. There exists little precedence for how courts shall decide when the laws of states conflict. It is, therefore, advisable to take one of two courses. First, you establish a Domestic Asset Protection Trust in your state of residence. If your state does not have favorable trust laws, then assets should be held within Wyoming via a business entity, bank etc. This worry is partly limited by the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause

• Going Bankrupt: There is a ten year look back period for transfers to asset protection trusts when you go bankrupt. If you are found to be intentionally defrauding an investor, then the assets in the trust will not be protected from bankruptcy proceedings for ten years.