RPF0604-Asset_Protection_Planning-What_Is_The_Problem_Were_Protecting

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00:00:30.620 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:31.920 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:33.760 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:35.860 | to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:37.960 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:39.600 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:41.340 | Today, we continue our series,

00:00:43.140 | Asset Protection Planning for Mere Mortals.

00:00:46.040 | This episode is part three, in which we will discuss

00:00:49.880 | what is the problem that we are protecting against.

00:00:54.020 | By way of refresher, this series falls in

00:00:57.280 | under the rubric of avoiding catastrophe.

00:01:00.320 | Once you have done the hard work of earning money,

00:01:03.460 | once you've done the hard work of saving money

00:01:05.860 | and investing that money, you will become wealthy.

00:01:10.260 | And now you have a whole new set of problems

00:01:12.840 | called how do I protect this wealth

00:01:15.840 | from the people who would love to take advantage of it?

00:01:18.780 | Now that protection will take many forms.

00:01:20.340 | In part one of this series, episode 601,

00:01:22.980 | I encouraged you to think very broadly

00:01:25.380 | about the topic of asset protection planning.

00:01:27.580 | I asked you to ask two questions.

00:01:29.180 | What is an asset?

00:01:30.320 | And then from whom or from what risk

00:01:32.180 | are you interested in protecting the asset?

00:01:34.660 | And that risk will vary depending on your situation.

00:01:38.500 | For some people, the risk is civil litigation,

00:01:41.360 | which is the bulk of what we'll be talking about today.

00:01:44.400 | For some people, the risk is your deadbeat nephew

00:01:48.040 | coming and asking you for money

00:01:50.540 | that they're gonna go and squander.

00:01:52.080 | For some people, the risk is physical theft,

00:01:55.480 | the fact that your roommate may go through

00:01:57.120 | your private effects and pilfer your money

00:01:59.780 | if you have it saved there.

00:02:00.820 | So of course, when I use that very broad discussion

00:02:03.820 | of asset protection, that you could identify the risks

00:02:06.660 | that would be appropriate to you.

00:02:07.700 | In part two of the series, episode 602,

00:02:10.220 | we talked about the legality and morality

00:02:12.400 | of asset protection.

00:02:13.240 | I asked two questions.

00:02:14.060 | Is it legal to engage in asset protection planning?

00:02:16.240 | And I briefly defended the answer, yes,

00:02:19.140 | it is legal to engage in asset protection planning.

00:02:21.740 | And as this series goes on, you'll hear more and more

00:02:24.440 | of the legal strategies and you'll see,

00:02:26.380 | and I trust be entirely persuaded

00:02:28.820 | that it's absolutely legal for you to engage

00:02:31.240 | in asset protection planning.

00:02:32.660 | Part two of that question where I discussed,

00:02:34.060 | is it moral for you to engage in asset protection planning?

00:02:37.460 | That's one that is of course more subjective

00:02:39.420 | and we won't be talking about it much in this series,

00:02:41.100 | but I defended the answer, yes, it is moral

00:02:44.200 | because you have no duty to make it easy

00:02:47.140 | for people to steal from you.

00:02:49.040 | And it's your job, you can always choose

00:02:51.080 | to give your money away if you want to,

00:02:53.640 | if you are found wrong or if you've committed wrong,

00:02:55.980 | it's always your choice to give the money away.

00:02:58.520 | Even if you weren't wrong, you can always choose

00:03:00.920 | to give the things that are yours away.

00:03:03.160 | But it's not right for you to make it easy

00:03:05.820 | for people to steal from you.

00:03:07.620 | And there may be cases where you can be found legally

00:03:11.100 | in the wrong, where you know that you are morally

00:03:14.360 | in the right.

00:03:15.200 | And in those cases, I believe you have a moral duty,

00:03:17.460 | a moral obligation to fight against the moral injustice,

00:03:22.460 | no matter what the legal consequences are.

00:03:24.640 | So I defended the thesis that yes,

00:03:26.080 | it is moral for you to engage in asset protection planning

00:03:28.840 | because you will always be in the situation

00:03:30.640 | where you can choose whether to give money.

00:03:34.180 | You can choose whether to pay a claim.

00:03:36.180 | And I want to put you in a situation where you're strong

00:03:38.720 | so that you can do what's morally right,

00:03:40.760 | no matter the course.

00:03:42.520 | Today in this episode, part three,

00:03:44.720 | we're going to talk about what is the problem

00:03:46.020 | we are protecting against.

00:03:47.660 | And my focus is to try to instill a little bit

00:03:51.760 | of concern into you.

00:03:53.960 | I hesitate to use the word because I don't like

00:03:57.640 | selling fear, but I think I'm going to use it.

00:04:00.380 | I want to instill a little bit of fear into you

00:04:04.840 | to inspire you to do some proactive planning

00:04:08.140 | by talking about what the problem is

00:04:10.440 | that we're actually protecting against.

00:04:12.840 | Because if you don't understand the problem,

00:04:15.160 | you may not understand how severe the problem actually is.

00:04:19.560 | You might think, well, I understand

00:04:23.360 | why some high-flying heart surgeon,

00:04:27.700 | who everyone knows has lots of money

00:04:29.400 | because after all, they're a heart surgeon,

00:04:31.240 | I understand why they would engage

00:04:33.480 | in asset protection planning.

00:04:35.080 | And I understand why that fraudster businessman

00:04:37.920 | would engage in asset protection, but come on,

00:04:40.180 | I just have a few hundred thousand dollars saved,

00:04:42.120 | a little bit of money in my IRA,

00:04:43.480 | working towards financial independence,

00:04:44.780 | got a rental house, I don't have any big risks.

00:04:48.180 | And I want to disabuse you of that lackadaisical attitude

00:04:51.460 | in this show by talking about the problem.

00:04:54.320 | I'm going to read you a number of examples

00:04:59.300 | from various asset protection books

00:05:01.660 | to help you to understand how severe this is.

00:05:04.640 | Quick comment on asset protection planning.

00:05:07.040 | The entirety of this series is put together by me

00:05:11.940 | based upon research, not based upon practice.

00:05:16.380 | I've never engaged in asset protection planning.

00:05:18.820 | I'm not a lawyer, I don't write trusts,

00:05:20.680 | it's not what I do.

00:05:22.080 | This is simply an interest of mine,

00:05:23.960 | and I believe it should be an interest of other people.

00:05:26.460 | And as such, I've educated myself about it,

00:05:28.500 | but I've educated myself about it entirely through reading,

00:05:31.120 | never through actual practice.

00:05:33.400 | Now, reading can be very helpful.

00:05:35.400 | It's helpful because it gives you a broad survey.

00:05:37.460 | And if you read a lot of stuff, as I do,

00:05:39.360 | you find a lot of really bad books

00:05:41.240 | and a lot of really good books,

00:05:42.400 | and you kind of learn to pick and choose.

00:05:43.940 | And in many ways, when you read extensively about a subject,

00:05:46.640 | you can start to see the themes that are the same

00:05:48.440 | that everyone agrees on,

00:05:49.680 | and then those themes that are more questionable.

00:05:51.540 | In this series, I'm not going to be engaging

00:05:53.140 | in anything that's questionable.

00:05:54.520 | I'm focusing on the things that everyone agrees on.

00:05:56.960 | But I will refer you, you always need to go

00:05:59.420 | and work with a competent legal advisor,

00:06:02.460 | financial advisor, most probably attorney

00:06:05.460 | specializing in asset protection planning.

00:06:07.560 | There are many things you can do yourself,

00:06:08.800 | but you will always need to go

00:06:10.160 | and get specific legal counsel,

00:06:11.900 | because the variety of things that can affect your situation

00:06:15.800 | are so extreme that there's no possibility

00:06:19.500 | that I can teach you effectively through all those things.

00:06:21.380 | You need an expert in this area for many of these things.

00:06:25.020 | But in that extensive reading,

00:06:26.540 | I've come to see that there are usually

00:06:27.880 | about five or six ideas that everybody seems to agree on

00:06:31.960 | as far as why do we face this problem.

00:06:34.360 | And I want to go through those with you.

00:06:36.760 | The first problem is that we live,

00:06:39.360 | in the United States of America in 2018,

00:06:41.520 | we live in a victim-oriented society.

00:06:44.960 | We live in a victim-oriented society.

00:06:49.500 | Now, there are two ways that you could take that.

00:06:51.640 | For example, we could take that idea of victim orientation

00:06:54.880 | in the direction of you're saying,

00:06:56.300 | we live in a society that is sensitive towards victims,

00:06:59.720 | that wants to see victims protected.

00:07:02.540 | I think there's probably a sense in which that's true.

00:07:05.420 | And I'm proud to live in a society like that.

00:07:07.720 | I want to always be one to stand against injustice.

00:07:11.920 | I want to always be one to stand up for what is right

00:07:14.460 | and to defend the victims, to defend the helpless,

00:07:17.200 | to defend the innocent, to defend especially those

00:07:19.700 | who can't defend themselves.

00:07:21.160 | I want to stand with the victim.

00:07:23.440 | So I appreciate how in many ways we do that,

00:07:27.600 | perhaps in the United States,

00:07:28.880 | perhaps better than in the past.

00:07:30.840 | But there's another sense, and this is the sense

00:07:34.080 | in which that term is being used,

00:07:36.040 | in which being in a victim-oriented society is not good.

00:07:40.680 | And it's a sense that in our current society,

00:07:44.880 | many people see themselves as victims who are helpless.

00:07:48.660 | And they in fact want to be victims

00:07:51.720 | because by nature of being a victim,

00:07:55.200 | they gain other forms of credibility.

00:08:00.860 | Now, the most important expression of this in our context

00:08:05.140 | is being the victim of something

00:08:07.260 | over which you can sue and get money.

00:08:09.940 | And we see that enhanced constantly.

00:08:12.060 | We see that discussed constantly.

00:08:14.000 | Perhaps the most annoying examples of this,

00:08:18.440 | and you understand why an attorney would engage

00:08:22.620 | in this form of advertising.

00:08:23.880 | But what I find very difficult to deal with

00:08:26.740 | is how crassly many plaintiffs' attorneys

00:08:31.740 | advertise themselves to potential victims

00:08:34.460 | and how transparent they are

00:08:36.420 | about the financial motivation.

00:08:38.780 | Where I live in Florida,

00:08:40.980 | there's a series of billboards put out by a local law firm.

00:08:44.420 | And the billboards feature in very large letters,

00:08:48.500 | well, they feature a picture of a person,

00:08:50.440 | just a normal snapshot, not a model, a real person.

00:08:52.860 | And then in very large letters,

00:08:54.220 | they feature something like this.

00:08:55.860 | Got me $632,000.

00:08:59.460 | Or got me $1,322,000.

00:09:03.820 | Or got me $175,000.

00:09:08.420 | And the entire point is to appeal to that larceny

00:09:12.300 | in the heart of many people,

00:09:13.140 | I'm gonna get mine.

00:09:14.340 | Gonna get me some.

00:09:16.840 | I find that pretty offensive.

00:09:22.360 | And you understand why the law firm uses that

00:09:25.920 | because then they get lots of phone calls

00:09:27.560 | from many people who were victims

00:09:29.440 | or who believe themselves to be victims,

00:09:31.360 | and they can sort through that.

00:09:32.800 | But this victim-oriented society

00:09:34.160 | has created greater dangers.

00:09:36.160 | And it seems like many people don't wish

00:09:38.040 | to take personal responsibility

00:09:39.420 | for things they can take personal responsibility for.

00:09:42.880 | We joke about somebody having a slip and fall

00:09:45.160 | on your front sidewalk.

00:09:46.380 | It's only funny because it's true.

00:09:52.800 | Now, thankfully, most people

00:09:54.200 | who are walking up your sidewalk

00:09:55.480 | and slip and fall and hurt themselves,

00:09:57.400 | thankfully, most people would say,

00:09:58.760 | I should have been more careful.

00:10:01.080 | But there are a lot of people

00:10:02.200 | and a lot more people today who will say,

00:10:04.900 | the sidewalk owner should have been more careful.

00:10:10.280 | And they'll look for a lawsuit.

00:10:12.200 | Now, I don't fully know what the source

00:10:15.440 | of this victim-oriented society is.

00:10:17.500 | I don't know.

00:10:19.880 | But it seems as though the historic US-American ethos

00:10:24.880 | of we can do it, pull yourself up, work hard, you can do it,

00:10:29.840 | is largely less strong than it once was.

00:10:34.680 | And there's much more of an ethos of you're a victim.

00:10:38.120 | You've been victimized.

00:10:39.080 | You're the 99%.

00:10:39.900 | You've been victimized by the 1%.

00:10:42.200 | Perhaps it's related to social theory,

00:10:46.240 | the most common social theory

00:10:47.960 | that has been taught to US-American college students

00:10:50.640 | for many decades is postmodernism

00:10:53.040 | and the modern expression

00:10:53.960 | of that postmodern intersectionality,

00:10:56.120 | where the more points of victimhood you can have,

00:10:58.920 | the more sympathy you'll get.

00:11:00.800 | You see this oftentimes in modern news stories.

00:11:04.200 | At this point, I never trust a single news story

00:11:06.800 | from the United States

00:11:07.920 | related to racial disparagement, something like that.

00:11:12.800 | Someone says somebody called me a racial name

00:11:15.860 | or somebody made some claim against me.

00:11:18.320 | It seems like when you start shutting this out,

00:11:20.680 | I don't know what the percentage of it,

00:11:22.120 | it seems about perhaps 70% of them or 80,

00:11:24.480 | probably it's probably a Pareto principle,

00:11:26.040 | probably 80% of them, more and more seem to be faked.

00:11:29.680 | And that is harmful to the 20% that are real,

00:11:32.480 | but the 80% fake it so that they can acquire the status

00:11:35.760 | of being a victim and so that people will dote on them.

00:11:39.160 | I don't know what it is.

00:11:40.320 | You form your own theory,

00:11:42.200 | but by living in a victim-oriented society

00:11:45.120 | where there are many people who see themselves as victims,

00:11:48.120 | that creates good fodder for number two,

00:11:49.840 | which is plaintiff lawyers.

00:11:52.060 | Most books refer to this as a litigation explosion,

00:11:54.760 | the time that we live in being a litigation explosion.

00:11:59.760 | Now, why is this?

00:12:02.200 | Who knows what the source of the problem is?

00:12:05.160 | It could be some of the things that you often see cited.

00:12:09.220 | There's a breakdown of traditional values,

00:12:11.060 | and by that you mean traditional Christian values,

00:12:13.980 | traditional Western Christian values.

00:12:16.520 | As the hold of Christianity on Western society

00:12:19.560 | has slackened and in many cases completely disappeared,

00:12:24.440 | the concept of personal responsibility

00:12:26.540 | and the concept of seeking forgiveness

00:12:28.840 | even in the face of injustice has largely diminished

00:12:32.500 | in favor of much more of a get-what's-mine perspective.

00:12:37.500 | Christians face serious problems

00:12:39.320 | when it comes to the topic of suing one another.

00:12:41.400 | There are strong biblical warnings against engaging

00:12:44.500 | in lawsuits against one another,

00:12:46.440 | and this creates this slowness, historically,

00:12:50.160 | for people to sue one another.

00:12:51.720 | Now, that seems to have changed,

00:12:53.280 | especially as Christianity has lost its hold

00:12:55.520 | on Western society.

00:12:56.920 | A major influence, perhaps,

00:12:58.600 | could be the loss of a sense of community.

00:13:01.160 | There was a reality in much of US American history

00:13:05.700 | where people lived in a local community.

00:13:08.500 | That local community was very much human-sized,

00:13:11.860 | anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people,

00:13:14.500 | which meant that in that local community,

00:13:16.580 | you knew people and you had a reputation,

00:13:18.500 | and that local reputation mattered.

00:13:20.460 | If you were somebody who brought a lawsuit against somebody

00:13:22.980 | and that lawsuit were frivolous,

00:13:25.260 | that would harm your reputation

00:13:26.640 | and make it very hard to live in a local community.

00:13:29.300 | There are many, many communities around the country

00:13:31.420 | that it still works that way.

00:13:33.980 | But as we increasingly live in an urban society,

00:13:36.440 | as we increasingly live in a society filled with many people,

00:13:39.460 | then it's much harder for that local reputation

00:13:41.700 | to be found out.

00:13:42.580 | Your reputation now is not in terms of your city,

00:13:44.840 | it's more in terms of your profession.

00:13:46.780 | And as that local sense of coherence changes

00:13:50.520 | and falls apart,

00:13:52.340 | especially as most of us more identify

00:13:54.360 | with our political party

00:13:55.660 | or with our friends on Facebook, et cetera,

00:13:57.740 | that local sense of community diminishes,

00:13:59.620 | and that leads to less of a prohibition

00:14:02.860 | or slowness about suing one another, perhaps that.

00:14:06.800 | There's just a lot of lawyers.

00:14:08.440 | One of the biggest challenges facing the country right now

00:14:11.960 | is the sheer number of attorneys.

00:14:15.040 | And there are a couple of expressions

00:14:17.360 | as far as why this matters so much.

00:14:19.720 | As tens of thousands of new lawyers

00:14:21.700 | graduate from law school every year,

00:14:23.280 | they have to find something to do.

00:14:24.560 | They have to find some way of earning a living.

00:14:28.240 | And of course, there are many specialties in law,

00:14:30.160 | but perhaps the biggest headlines often come

00:14:33.200 | around attorneys who can win big judgments.

00:14:36.320 | And there's a huge financial incentive

00:14:38.740 | for an attorney to take on cases

00:14:41.280 | that result in them possibly receiving a large judgment.

00:14:44.640 | I had several clients who were primarily

00:14:48.080 | plaintiff's attorneys where they did this,

00:14:50.600 | and they made a lot of money.

00:14:52.520 | And it was very much high-flying work.

00:14:56.080 | We have lots of lawyers coming out

00:14:58.240 | and then trying to figure out how do I make a living?

00:15:00.600 | Well, as those lawyers go out through society,

00:15:02.920 | they have to find more and more cases.

00:15:04.200 | But all the good cases,

00:15:05.880 | the cases where there are clear forms of right and wrong,

00:15:08.960 | clear forms of negligence,

00:15:10.760 | those plaintiffs can take that

00:15:12.320 | to any law firm in the country.

00:15:14.160 | And so they usually, those cases go to a small number

00:15:17.480 | of well-established and famous lawyers.

00:15:20.200 | And especially if you're up against somebody

00:15:22.960 | who's done serious wrong, et cetera,

00:15:25.000 | because the plaintiff is not paying the bill, usually,

00:15:29.040 | the attorney is taking it on a contingency fee basis.

00:15:32.440 | The plaintiff just simply has to bring the case

00:15:34.040 | and they can pick and choose their lawyer.

00:15:35.840 | Well, what about the bottom 80% of lawyers

00:15:38.280 | who are looking for work,

00:15:39.880 | but they can't attract the good cases?

00:15:42.240 | Well, they have to go out and find more and more cases.

00:15:44.920 | They have to go out and try more and more cases.

00:15:47.360 | All the easy cases are gone,

00:15:48.840 | and they go to the top few percent of law firms.

00:15:52.080 | So now you have local attorneys trying to figure out

00:15:54.640 | how do I come up with something else?

00:15:56.160 | And they have to figure out how to make a living.

00:15:57.560 | And so you have just this huge proliferation

00:16:00.280 | of plaintiff's attorneys.

00:16:02.240 | And all of them are hungry for a lawsuit.

00:16:04.960 | They're all putting up attorneys.

00:16:06.960 | They're sorry, they're all putting up billboards.

00:16:09.160 | Got me $240,000, now come and get you some.

00:16:12.400 | And when you look at the incentives of the case,

00:16:15.400 | and the actual incentives that the attorney faces,

00:16:17.640 | the plaintiff can bring the case.

00:16:19.320 | So the attorney advertises,

00:16:20.640 | they talk to lots of plaintiffs,

00:16:22.360 | and the attorney has a choice.

00:16:24.160 | Do I think there's a good case here

00:16:25.360 | and do I want to take it?

00:16:26.520 | If they take it on, the attorney bears

00:16:28.160 | all of the financial risk of the case,

00:16:32.160 | the plaintiff doesn't bear that usually.

00:16:34.640 | And if it's a bad case, then the plaintiff does,

00:16:36.240 | the plaintiff bears it on an hourly fee basis.

00:16:38.480 | But the attorney bears the risk.

00:16:40.040 | And when the attorney follows through on the case,

00:16:44.360 | they're hoping for many potential outcomes.

00:16:46.440 | They're hoping to settle the case

00:16:47.480 | before it actually goes to trial.

00:16:48.920 | And they know the power that an attorney,

00:16:51.520 | a good attorney has with a legal right

00:16:54.000 | of exposing somebody, they know the power

00:16:55.640 | that they have up against a normal person.

00:16:58.320 | It's absolutely profound.

00:17:00.400 | And so when you have these major,

00:17:02.360 | just massive proliferation of plaintiff's attorneys,

00:17:05.280 | and as a moment, massive new expanding theories

00:17:08.200 | of liability, which is the next one,

00:17:10.760 | you have a lot more potential for many civil cases.

00:17:15.160 | Again, the next one is expanding theories of liability.

00:17:19.160 | As US American law has developed in the past,

00:17:23.200 | over the past decades, the traditional and normal ideas

00:17:27.880 | about who is liable for behavior

00:17:30.240 | have been superseded by expanded theories

00:17:33.360 | about who is liable for behavior

00:17:35.080 | and under what circumstances.

00:17:37.280 | And it's very much driven as you have more

00:17:41.440 | and more attorneys who are taking these cases

00:17:43.280 | and looking to try to figure out

00:17:45.120 | how can we find some negligence somewhere

00:17:48.520 | by somebody who has money.

00:17:50.080 | That's led to these ongoing theories.

00:17:52.320 | And the challenges, in my reading of this industry,

00:17:57.320 | it's currently unknown even where some of these limits

00:17:59.680 | of liability stop.

00:18:03.040 | The next most important one you have to think about

00:18:05.320 | is the idea of deep pocket theory.

00:18:07.640 | Who has a deep pocket?

00:18:09.480 | And these two go together.

00:18:10.760 | I'm gonna read you some examples here

00:18:12.320 | from a few different asset protection books

00:18:14.400 | that will give you an understanding

00:18:16.560 | of how these two play together.

00:18:18.520 | If you have somebody who has deep pockets,

00:18:21.520 | and if you can find some theory of liability

00:18:24.280 | to apply to them, then you can have a successful lawsuit,

00:18:27.640 | which can make you, if you are a plaintiff's attorney,

00:18:30.320 | or you, if you are a victim, quite a bit of money.

00:18:34.360 | And the deep pocket theory has to do with

00:18:36.160 | who has the money to pay?

00:18:37.640 | If you don't have the money to pay,

00:18:39.040 | no attorney is going to take their time

00:18:41.320 | to try the case.

00:18:47.600 | Why would they spend months and months

00:18:49.080 | and tens of thousands of dollars,

00:18:50.360 | if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a case

00:18:52.480 | where they'll get a legal judgment that they can't enforce?

00:18:55.120 | Let me read you a section here from an estate plan,

00:18:58.440 | sorry, an asset protection planning book

00:19:00.800 | from a chapter called

00:19:01.840 | "Searching for the Deep Pocket Defendant."

00:19:04.760 | Before I do, I need to give you

00:19:07.000 | two minutes of warning on stories.

00:19:09.360 | I'm gonna read you a few stories,

00:19:11.360 | but I would caution you to always be careful

00:19:13.440 | in accepting at face value any particular legal story

00:19:18.280 | without actually going and reading the legal case yourself.

00:19:20.960 | Here's the problem.

00:19:22.440 | With legal news articles and legal stories,

00:19:26.240 | there are a lot of them that are reported sensationally,

00:19:29.880 | that are truly sensational.

00:19:31.640 | They are truly astounding when you actually look at it.

00:19:35.760 | The problem has to do with

00:19:36.760 | when is the reporting being done

00:19:38.360 | and how accurate is the actual reporting?

00:19:41.760 | I'm so grateful when I was in college

00:19:44.600 | that I had a business law professor

00:19:46.760 | that forced us to start reading some cases.

00:19:48.560 | And one of the cases we read was the case,

00:19:50.680 | the famous McDonald's hot coffee case,

00:19:52.960 | where a lady spilled hot coffee in her lap

00:19:56.000 | and sued McDonald's for selling hot coffee.

00:19:59.600 | I don't know of a case that's more cited as ridiculous

00:20:02.680 | than that particular case.

00:20:04.320 | But in actually reading the details of the case,

00:20:07.880 | I came to believe that the lady was right in her lawsuit

00:20:11.720 | and justice was basically done.

00:20:15.480 | The problem has to do with

00:20:16.840 | what historical perspective do you have?

00:20:19.320 | So the facts of the case, been years since I've read it,

00:20:21.520 | you go and read it yourself,

00:20:22.560 | but I'm pretty sure I've got the facts good enough

00:20:24.680 | that I can relate them to you with accuracy

00:20:27.400 | here in this short story.

00:20:28.760 | This elderly lady did have hot coffee and she spilled it.

00:20:33.000 | She spilled it in her lap and suffered serious burns

00:20:36.160 | to her genitals, to her inner thighs, et cetera.

00:20:39.560 | After the burn, she found out that McDonald's

00:20:41.960 | had at that time a practice of serving their coffee

00:20:44.800 | at a much, much higher temperature

00:20:47.600 | than most of us drink coffee or ever have coffee.

00:20:50.480 | It was much closer to boiling

00:20:52.360 | because they wanted to make sure

00:20:53.320 | they were always serving hot coffee

00:20:54.920 | than we're accustomed to.

00:20:56.200 | And they didn't have any extra labels

00:20:58.240 | as to far as how hot that was.

00:21:00.360 | Now, you know as well as I do

00:21:01.520 | that if you have a cup of coffee

00:21:02.600 | from your home coffee maker, not a big risk.

00:21:04.800 | If you spill it on yourself,

00:21:05.840 | you might get a little bit of a scald,

00:21:07.360 | but it's not gonna be serious burns.

00:21:09.080 | But if you had a pot of just under boiling water

00:21:11.560 | on the stove and you spill it on yourself,

00:21:13.000 | you know there's a bigger risk

00:21:14.080 | and you would be more careful with that.

00:21:15.960 | That was the basics of her case.

00:21:18.040 | And I believe she just simply wanted McDonald's

00:21:20.000 | to pay for some of her hospital bills.

00:21:21.880 | Well, McDonald's fought,

00:21:23.120 | and because McDonald's fought

00:21:24.440 | and pursued a very elite, aggressive, corporate,

00:21:27.680 | you know, this is a ridiculous lawsuit perspective,

00:21:30.800 | then she sued all the way.

00:21:33.000 | The jury was so offended by the behavior

00:21:35.440 | of the McDonald's defense attorneys

00:21:37.480 | that the jury awarded the lady

00:21:39.040 | many millions of dollars for her injuries.

00:21:41.400 | And that was the headline that got reported.

00:21:45.160 | Much later, those damages were adjusted

00:21:47.920 | down to a much more reasonable number,

00:21:50.120 | but that never got reported.

00:21:51.880 | So what happens a lot of times in these cases is,

00:21:54.280 | first of all, what are the actual facts of the case?

00:21:56.560 | You need to read the facts and understand the facts

00:21:58.520 | to understand was there actual liability here?

00:22:01.360 | Was there actual circumstances?

00:22:02.880 | And people will be very selective

00:22:04.160 | in reporting the facts when talking about legal cases.

00:22:07.720 | The second thing is, what actually happens in the lawsuit?

00:22:10.600 | Were the awards and the damages

00:22:12.960 | that were actually assessed reasonable?

00:22:15.520 | And oftentimes, the jury may suggest a much higher reward

00:22:19.600 | that the judge later adjusts.

00:22:21.600 | So I'm square in the middle on this stuff.

00:22:24.240 | I have lost much confidence

00:22:26.720 | in the modern US American legal system,

00:22:29.360 | but I still see enough people who are working hard

00:22:33.080 | to find justice that I still have more confidence

00:22:36.080 | in a lot of people.

00:22:36.920 | And I would caution you,

00:22:37.960 | many times cases are reported in absurd ways

00:22:41.800 | that when you go and read the actual case,

00:22:43.720 | the facts don't bear out that stilted description of it.

00:22:48.440 | Now, with that as the case,

00:22:50.400 | let me read to you a few pages from this particular book

00:22:54.040 | by an estate planning attorney in a chapter called

00:22:56.080 | "Searching for the Deep Pocket Defendant."

00:22:57.560 | He writes this, "The reality of our legal system

00:23:00.400 | is that people are named as defendants in lawsuits,

00:23:02.680 | not because of their degree of fault,

00:23:04.560 | but because of their ability to pay.

00:23:06.560 | When an attorney is approached by a potential client

00:23:08.520 | who is claiming injury or economic loss,

00:23:11.000 | the attorney will consider whether a theory of liability

00:23:13.120 | can be developed against a party who can pay a judgment.

00:23:15.880 | This is called the search for the deep pocket defendant.

00:23:19.360 | The deep pocket defendant

00:23:20.360 | will have substantial insurance coverage

00:23:22.240 | or significant personal assets.

00:23:24.440 | The measure of an attorney's skill

00:23:25.800 | is his ability to create a theory of liability,

00:23:28.440 | which will connect a deep pocket defendant

00:23:30.360 | to the facts of a particular case.

00:23:32.320 | Here is an example of what might happen in a particular case.

00:23:35.120 | Mr. Wilson is driving in his car.

00:23:37.080 | Mr. Fineman runs through a stop sign at an intersection,

00:23:39.600 | smashing into Wilson's car and causing Wilson severe injury.

00:23:43.160 | From his hospital bed, Wilson Googles local attorneys

00:23:46.120 | and calls the first attorney he sees, Alan Abel.

00:23:49.000 | He is what is known as a contingent fee lawyer.

00:23:51.600 | He works for a percentage of the ultimate recovery

00:23:53.640 | and determines whether to invest his time and money in a case

00:23:56.600 | based upon what his expected return will be.

00:23:59.160 | Since the time and expense of preparing for litigation

00:24:01.520 | can be considerable,

00:24:02.920 | an attorney cannot afford to take a case

00:24:04.760 | that is not likely to pay off.

00:24:06.480 | Remember, no recovery, no fee.

00:24:09.440 | Usually, the attorney advances all costs and expenses,

00:24:12.280 | and in exchange, he recovers these costs,

00:24:14.280 | plus 30% to 40% of any amounts

00:24:16.880 | that he can get from the defendant.

00:24:18.920 | Before Abel decides to take Wilson's case,

00:24:21.240 | he will want to do some serious research

00:24:22.960 | to determine the merits of the case.

00:24:24.800 | Not the legal merits, the financial ones.

00:24:27.240 | He will want to know whether Fineman has substantial assets

00:24:30.160 | in order to make the case worthwhile.

00:24:32.320 | Abel runs a financial search

00:24:33.720 | and determines that Fineman has no insurance

00:24:36.000 | and no significant assets,

00:24:37.480 | such as a home or a retirement nest egg.

00:24:39.920 | What happens? Is that the end of the case?

00:24:42.240 | As for Fineman, it probably is the end of the case.

00:24:45.120 | Abel is not going to waste his time

00:24:46.600 | suing someone who can't pay.

00:24:48.520 | But Abel is not going to give up so easily.

00:24:50.960 | He has a client with substantial injuries,

00:24:53.440 | and that means a large damage award, big bucks.

00:24:56.400 | But first, he has to find someone who can pay.

00:24:59.080 | Here is how a successful lawyer would analyze the case

00:25:01.280 | to try to draw in a deep-pocket defendant.

00:25:04.160 | Was Fineman on an errand for his employer

00:25:05.960 | at the time of the crash?

00:25:07.200 | If so, the employer can be sued.

00:25:09.320 | Did Fineman have any alcohol in his system?

00:25:11.840 | The restaurant that served him may have liability.

00:25:14.760 | Was Fineman on any medication?

00:25:16.680 | The pharmacist, drug company, or physician

00:25:18.800 | may have potential liability

00:25:20.600 | for failure to provide warnings,

00:25:22.080 | or for writing or filling the prescription improperly.

00:25:25.120 | The stop sign Fineman ran through

00:25:26.640 | was in a residential neighborhood

00:25:27.880 | in front of someone's house.

00:25:29.280 | Did the homeowner properly maintain his property

00:25:31.520 | and clear his foliage

00:25:32.640 | to provide an unobstructed view of the stop sign?

00:25:35.200 | If not, there is a case against the homeowner for negligence.

00:25:38.240 | Did the municipality take due care

00:25:40.760 | in the placement of the stop sign?

00:25:42.440 | Should it have used a traffic light instead?

00:25:44.680 | There may be a case against the city or county.

00:25:47.720 | The driver's side door of Wilson's car collapsed on impact.

00:25:51.500 | There is a possible case against the manufacturer

00:25:53.680 | for not making a more crash-resistant frame.

00:25:56.440 | Do you see how far we are moving away from Fineman,

00:25:59.240 | the person responsible for the accident,

00:26:02.200 | in an effort to tie in a remote deep pocket defendant?

00:26:05.360 | In any rational legal system,

00:26:06.880 | Fineman would be regarded as the wrongdoer.

00:26:08.920 | He disobeyed the traffic law and he caused the injury.

00:26:11.980 | Instead, we have an attorney trying to force the blame

00:26:14.200 | onto someone else who wasn't at the scene

00:26:16.220 | and doesn't even know the people involved.

00:26:18.520 | The example that we just gave you

00:26:19.720 | is taken from a real case.

00:26:21.200 | Guess who ended up as the defendant?

00:26:23.240 | In the actual case,

00:26:24.320 | the defendant was Fineman's 92-year-old widowed

00:26:26.760 | great aunt Ellen.

00:26:28.160 | As it turned out,

00:26:29.000 | she had purchased the car for Fineman as a gift to him.

00:26:31.920 | Abel's private investigator searched the assets

00:26:34.480 | of Fineman's relatives and found that Aunt Ellen

00:26:37.160 | had a house that she owned and some savings in the bank.

00:26:39.920 | She was named as the defendant in the case

00:26:41.880 | and was found liable on a theory

00:26:43.400 | called negligent entrustment.

00:26:45.320 | The jury found that she should not have bought

00:26:47.260 | the car for him.

00:26:48.360 | She should have known that he was a careless driver

00:26:50.480 | and might cause an accident.

00:26:52.080 | She caused the accident by buying him the car.

00:26:55.820 | The verdict was for $932,000

00:26:58.600 | and Aunt Ellen lost nearly everything she owned.

00:27:02.260 | That comes from a book by Robert Mintz.

00:27:06.060 | You can see why these two things have to go together.

00:27:09.960 | Expanded theories of liability and deep pockets

00:27:13.280 | are the key to who gets sued and why.

00:27:16.400 | We read another few examples

00:27:17.920 | from a different estate planning,

00:27:19.360 | or asset protection planning book,

00:27:21.480 | where the author is talking about this problem

00:27:23.400 | and talking about why the concept

00:27:26.160 | of indirect civil liability,

00:27:28.560 | which is a liability that attaches to someone

00:27:31.160 | other than the person who commits the legal wrong,

00:27:33.360 | the tort, is perhaps the biggest threat to wealthy people

00:27:37.480 | because it allows plaintiffs to attach liability

00:27:40.520 | to almost anyone who has vulnerable wealth

00:27:43.560 | rather than to the person who actually committed the offense.

00:27:47.040 | Indirect civil liability, excessive judgment awards,

00:27:49.320 | and the following factors have turned our legal system

00:27:51.460 | from one of justice to one of redistributing wealth

00:27:54.160 | from the haves to the have-nots.

00:27:56.400 | Most civil plaintiffs' attorneys are paid a percentage

00:27:58.720 | of amounts collected from litigation.

00:28:00.880 | So the larger the judgment or settlement,

00:28:02.720 | the more money they make.

00:28:04.040 | This in turn means attorneys try to sue

00:28:05.960 | as many people as possible in any given case.

00:28:08.760 | This is the reason for various theories

00:28:10.360 | of indirect liability.

00:28:12.000 | Judges support theories of indirect liability

00:28:14.180 | which attach to the person with the most money

00:28:16.040 | rather than, or in addition to,

00:28:18.280 | the person who committed the offense.

00:28:20.240 | Juries decide on emotions.

00:28:22.520 | A Robin Hood mentality rather than sound legal reasoning

00:28:26.600 | are unpredictable at best and catastrophic

00:28:28.760 | to a defendant's wealth at worst.

00:28:30.700 | Case in point, a large lawsuit

00:28:32.600 | against a giant stadium concession company

00:28:34.680 | resulted in a $110 million judgment.

00:28:37.280 | And the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered a retrial

00:28:39.720 | because of several legal errors

00:28:41.100 | by the Superior Court's presiding judge

00:28:42.920 | which led to such a high verdict.

00:28:44.880 | The injured party in this lawsuit was a two-year-old girl

00:28:47.440 | who was struck by a drunk driver

00:28:48.980 | that bought alcohol from the concession company.

00:28:51.660 | No one will say that the permanent paralyzation

00:28:54.520 | of an infant is not a great tragedy.

00:28:56.520 | However, there's a strong trend in litigation

00:28:58.720 | that links emotionally charged cases

00:29:00.580 | to unusually high judgments.

00:29:02.500 | Why was the drunk driver not sued?

00:29:04.480 | Why was the concession company's employee

00:29:06.600 | who sold the alcohol to the drunk driver not sued?

00:29:09.400 | Why only the deep pocket defendant?

00:29:11.680 | How many people lost their jobs

00:29:13.260 | because the deep pocket had to pay $110 million

00:29:16.160 | to the plaintiff which forced them

00:29:17.860 | to lay off employees as a result?

00:29:20.080 | One only has to randomly read a few civil cases

00:29:22.440 | to see how thoroughly established indirect liability

00:29:25.040 | has become in our legal system.

00:29:26.900 | Study enough of these cases

00:29:28.140 | and you see many examples of indirect liability.

00:29:31.160 | An employee causes damages,

00:29:32.480 | so the employer is liable for the employee's actions.

00:29:35.400 | A vehicle is involved in an accident.

00:29:37.580 | The owner is liable even if they're not driving it.

00:29:40.580 | A landlord fails to maintain property.

00:29:42.840 | For example, they don't put salt on an icy sidewalk

00:29:45.260 | and someone is injured.

00:29:46.440 | The non-managing property owner may be liable.

00:29:49.200 | An individual buys a property for someone else.

00:29:51.520 | The recipient then intentionally or unintentionally

00:29:54.320 | uses that property to injure themselves or another.

00:29:57.320 | For example, you give a hunting buddy a gun

00:29:59.100 | and then he shoots himself or someone else.

00:30:01.160 | The gift giver is liable

00:30:02.600 | under the theory of negligent entrustment.

00:30:04.760 | Yes, people have actually been sued for giving gifts.

00:30:07.640 | A person refers someone to a business or service

00:30:09.880 | that ends up committing a tort.

00:30:11.440 | The referrer can be sued as a result.

00:30:13.800 | Litigation from this type of liability is common,

00:30:16.200 | especially among professionals

00:30:17.540 | such as CPAs, financial advisors,

00:30:19.640 | and attorneys who refer clients.

00:30:21.640 | These are only examples of indirect liability.

00:30:25.480 | Indirect liability can be further broken down

00:30:27.520 | into subsets such as lingering liability,

00:30:30.040 | which we'll now discuss.

00:30:31.560 | Lingering liability is a liability

00:30:33.620 | that may be triggered many years after the tort

00:30:36.080 | or negligent act was committed.

00:30:38.100 | To explain lingering liability,

00:30:40.100 | let's examine a Texas case from several years back.

00:30:42.960 | A home builder built a home to sell it.

00:30:45.080 | He subcontracted another company to put in a septic system.

00:30:48.500 | Instead of installing a proper septic system,

00:30:50.620 | the subcontractor cut corners to save money

00:30:53.060 | and used a large propane tank.

00:30:55.140 | 10 years later, the propane leaked,

00:30:57.020 | raw sewage seeped through the home's foundation

00:30:59.140 | and into the walls.

00:31:00.380 | Everyone living in the home,

00:31:01.840 | including an eight-month-old baby,

00:31:03.580 | developed staph infections,

00:31:05.100 | which required hospitalization.

00:31:07.140 | The original builder had operated as a sole proprietorship

00:31:09.980 | when the home was built,

00:31:11.160 | was sued for a very large sum of money, and lost,

00:31:14.080 | despite the fact that another company

00:31:15.700 | put in the faulty septic tank.

00:31:17.580 | In this situation, we must ask ourselves,

00:31:20.240 | if at some point in the 10-year period

00:31:22.460 | between when the home was built and the septic tank leaked,

00:31:25.260 | I had sold or resold the home,

00:31:27.780 | could I be named as a party on this lawsuit?

00:31:30.260 | Shouldn't a real estate property inspector

00:31:32.060 | have been able to determine

00:31:33.260 | an incorrect septic tank was installed?

00:31:35.700 | Hint, when's the last time you've seen

00:31:37.360 | a real estate inspector dig up a yard

00:31:39.040 | to look at a septic tank?

00:31:40.660 | The answer to the first question is yes,

00:31:42.840 | you could be sued if you sold a property with major defects,

00:31:45.900 | even if you didn't know about the defect,

00:31:48.020 | and even if a qualified professional inspected the property.

00:31:51.360 | Remember, in court, the facts are not decided

00:31:53.660 | by real estate inspection experts.

00:31:55.500 | They are decided by a jury

00:31:56.860 | who may not have the faintest idea about real estate.

00:31:59.620 | The jury will most likely think, however,

00:32:01.580 | that someone who owns rental units

00:32:03.100 | or buys and sells real estate is rich.

00:32:05.380 | They're angry that an eight-month-old baby was hospitalized.

00:32:08.580 | Whether or not you could have detected

00:32:10.320 | and corrected the problem is beside the point.

00:32:12.740 | Would this jury play Robin Hood?

00:32:16.060 | Would they take from the so-called haves, you,

00:32:18.740 | and give to the have-nots regardless of fault?

00:32:21.220 | Who's regardless of fault?

00:32:22.900 | In a country where over 30 million lawsuits

00:32:24.860 | are filed each year, it happens many times each day.

00:32:28.460 | A similar situation happened to one of our clients

00:32:30.680 | long before he'd seen the need for asset protection.

00:32:33.020 | His case falls not only under lingering liability,

00:32:35.700 | but also under something we call expanded liability,

00:32:38.540 | another type of indirect liability.

00:32:41.020 | Many years ago, he operated a car dealership

00:32:43.220 | as a sole proprietorship.

00:32:44.620 | He bought a used car with damaged brakes,

00:32:46.780 | sent the car to a mechanic shop for repairs,

00:32:48.980 | and then sold the car.

00:32:50.560 | 10 years later, the car was involved in an accident,

00:32:53.060 | which, unfortunately, resulted in multiple fatalities.

00:32:56.540 | The car brakes had failed.

00:32:58.180 | Even though the brakes had worked perfectly for 10 years,

00:33:01.060 | guess who got sued?

00:33:02.620 | That's right, the person who had operated his dealership

00:33:05.220 | as a sole proprietorship.

00:33:06.860 | Fortunately, he only lost $50,000 in this case,

00:33:09.660 | but it could have turned out far worse.

00:33:11.900 | Notice that his company wasn't even the one

00:33:14.020 | that fixed the brakes, yet it was the one that got sued.

00:33:17.420 | This is a perfect example of expanded liability.

00:33:20.300 | People are sued under theories of expanded liability

00:33:22.900 | because attorneys collect a percentage of the judgment

00:33:25.380 | or settlement award amount when they sue,

00:33:27.580 | so they have an incentive to sue as many people as possible

00:33:30.140 | for as much as possible.

00:33:31.780 | More people sued equals more money,

00:33:34.420 | which means the attorney gets more fees.

00:33:37.300 | Another highly public case more clearly illustrates

00:33:39.580 | how theories of expanded liability are used

00:33:41.620 | to go after deep pockets.

00:33:43.140 | Earlier, we discussed a giant stadium concessionaire

00:33:45.500 | whose employee sold beer to an already inebriated man

00:33:48.300 | during a game.

00:33:49.500 | After the game, the intoxicated man was involved

00:33:52.040 | in an accident, resulting in a fatality.

00:33:54.340 | The drunk driver was broke,

00:33:55.780 | and even though he went to jail,

00:33:57.060 | the plaintiff's attorney didn't pursue anything

00:33:58.740 | beyond his insurance company's $200,000 payout,

00:34:02.020 | nor did the employee who sold the beer

00:34:04.100 | pay a dime to the defendant, despite his poor judgment.

00:34:07.320 | The employee's large and wealthy employer, however,

00:34:09.780 | lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay $110 million

00:34:14.020 | to the plaintiff.

00:34:15.420 | Who had the money?

00:34:16.860 | Who got stung?

00:34:18.340 | If you are only remotely connected to a lawsuit

00:34:21.220 | and no one else involved has significant assets but you,

00:34:24.220 | who do you think the plaintiff's attorney will pursue?

00:34:27.220 | That excerpt comes from a book called

00:34:30.140 | Asset Protection in Financially Unsafe Times

00:34:32.300 | by Arnold Goldstein, who is a prominent author

00:34:34.620 | who's written a number of books on the subject,

00:34:35.980 | and Ryan Fowler.

00:34:37.480 | I hope that you see with those examples

00:34:42.140 | how difficult this problem of various theories

00:34:47.140 | of liability really can be.

00:34:50.020 | In the past, I've done a long series of shows

00:34:52.580 | on law enforcement, protecting yourself from legal risks.

00:34:58.540 | And the reason I did that was to try to impress upon you

00:35:03.020 | the reality that you are vulnerable.

00:35:05.340 | You are a criminal.

00:35:06.860 | Under current US American law, you are a criminal.

00:35:09.860 | Now, we don't know what law you've broken

00:35:11.980 | and neither do you.

00:35:13.820 | But if we knew every detail of your life

00:35:16.500 | and if we had time and you had notoriety,

00:35:19.020 | we could find a whole bunch of things to charge against you

00:35:21.900 | and find you to be a criminal,

00:35:23.460 | which is why it's so important for you

00:35:26.140 | to protect yourself from those risks.

00:35:29.460 | That's hard for a lot of normal people to accept.

00:35:32.860 | That's hard for a lot of people who think,

00:35:34.900 | I'm a good person, I'm a decent, upstanding citizen,

00:35:37.460 | I obey the law, but yet you're saying I'm a criminal?

00:35:40.160 | Yes, you are.

00:35:42.900 | Today, you are committing felonies.

00:35:44.980 | You just don't know what they are

00:35:46.220 | and neither does anybody else,

00:35:47.740 | until or unless you allow yourself to be pushed

00:35:50.020 | under the lens of investigation

00:35:53.420 | and then there's all kinds of things that can be found.

00:35:56.020 | So that's the parallel in the criminal world.

00:35:58.460 | The same thing applies, however,

00:35:59.980 | in this context to civil litigation.

00:36:02.320 | You are liable.

00:36:05.860 | You have been negligent.

00:36:08.060 | Somewhere along the line, at some point,

00:36:12.220 | even though you probably don't even know it,

00:36:14.060 | there is a set of facts that could be drawn against you

00:36:18.540 | for some of your behavior at some point in the past years.

00:36:23.620 | And these things compound.

00:36:26.180 | You didn't realize it at the time.

00:36:27.940 | You were just operating under a normal life.

00:36:31.320 | You were just simply saying, I'm just being a normal person.

00:36:33.740 | I'm trying to be prudent in all my affairs.

00:36:35.980 | But you were found negligent somewhere.

00:36:38.460 | You could be found negligent by a motivated attorney

00:36:42.540 | with a set of facts, who has a victim

00:36:44.500 | and a sympathetic jury.

00:36:48.380 | Because there are enough proven legal theories

00:36:50.540 | that could be found to hold you responsible.

00:36:54.000 | That's why asset protection planning is so important.

00:36:57.400 | Because you can't just be prudent.

00:36:59.720 | One of my pieces of advice is be prudent,

00:37:02.160 | be careful, be thoughtful, be considerate.

00:37:04.880 | But that's not enough.

00:37:06.120 | It's not enough just to be a prudent, careful person.

00:37:08.520 | Because when you're faced with this monstrosity

00:37:11.480 | of indirect liability, lingering liability, et cetera,

00:37:16.320 | prudence is not enough.

00:37:19.080 | It's not enough.

00:37:22.960 | That's the problem.

00:37:25.480 | You might be a careful person.

00:37:29.060 | You might be a prudent person.

00:37:30.660 | You might be careful in all your hiring practices.

00:37:35.980 | But if you hire people, in some fact patterns,

00:37:40.980 | you are liable for the behavior of those people.

00:37:43.520 | Personally, you're liable for your employees.

00:37:46.100 | You're liable for your equipment.

00:37:48.080 | You're liable for all kinds of things.

00:37:50.440 | There are enough examples that we could find.

00:37:53.960 | Let me give you two more.

00:37:55.840 | Back in the late '90s, there was a case

00:37:57.940 | in the United States of America

00:37:59.680 | where a man named Wendell Williams went on a rampage

00:38:04.680 | with a gun and killed two people.

00:38:07.520 | He went on a psychotic rampage and killed two people.

00:38:10.200 | He sued a former psychiatrist of his

00:38:13.640 | named Dr. Myron Lipson.

00:38:15.160 | You can go back, there's a 60 minutes episode of this

00:38:18.780 | that was done on the case.

00:38:20.120 | If you can go back and find it.

00:38:21.480 | So he sued his psychiatrist.

00:38:24.260 | When Dr. Lipson first met Wendell Williamson,

00:38:30.160 | Williamson was in law school.

00:38:34.040 | He was 26 years old and he was in law school.

00:38:37.280 | And he was brought in for an appointment

00:38:39.560 | because he had disrupted a law class

00:38:43.000 | claiming that he had powers of telepathy.

00:38:45.840 | And so they brought him in to the psychiatrist

00:38:48.160 | for an emergency appointment to try to help with him.

00:38:50.920 | Now over time, the psychiatrist worked with him.

00:38:52.920 | He evaluated him over time,

00:38:55.160 | diagnosed the patient as having paranoid schizophrenia

00:38:58.400 | and prescribed antipsychotic medication.

00:39:00.720 | And evidently the patient showed signs of improvement.

00:39:03.920 | Dr. Lipson went on to retire

00:39:06.520 | and he instructed his patient to continue treatment

00:39:09.720 | with his successor who was working there at the clinic.

00:39:14.360 | The Williamson, the shooter,

00:39:18.760 | never after Lipson retired,

00:39:21.700 | never went to go back to see the successive psychiatrists.

00:39:26.120 | And then he stopped taking his antipsychotic medication.

00:39:29.080 | And then one day he got a gun,

00:39:30.540 | he went out and shot and killed two people.

00:39:32.840 | So he sued the psychiatrist

00:39:35.080 | claiming that the psychiatrist should have followed up

00:39:38.540 | and made sure that he see the successor physician

00:39:41.760 | and should have warned him more

00:39:43.760 | about the potential of his psychosis,

00:39:46.840 | that he would cause more problems.

00:39:49.160 | And at trial, Williamson was awarded $500,000 of damages

00:39:54.160 | from Dr. Lipson who had not seen him

00:39:57.720 | for eight months before the shooting

00:40:00.120 | and whose orders of medical care the patient had ignored.

00:40:04.340 | Now the problem in this case,

00:40:06.640 | Dr. Lipson was openly acknowledged in the court

00:40:11.840 | to be an absolutely superb psychiatrist,

00:40:16.440 | to be a phenomenal practitioner, to be very, very prudent.

00:40:20.880 | And at the end of his career, he did the right thing,

00:40:24.720 | retired from practice,

00:40:25.920 | did the right thing with his patients.

00:40:28.040 | That's tough.

00:40:29.240 | You know, one of the hardest things, anyway, that's tough.

00:40:32.040 | The point is it was rightly a scandal at the time,

00:40:37.240 | front page news, there's a reason why it was on 60 Minutes,

00:40:40.040 | but yet still Lipson was found guilty.

00:40:44.640 | If that doesn't chill you to the bone, it really should.

00:40:47.440 | Let me read you one other example.

00:40:50.200 | The second example I said,

00:40:51.320 | and this comes from the Mintz book.

00:40:53.840 | A wealthy client, Alan, invested $10,000

00:40:56.280 | in a software development business

00:40:57.800 | owned by a college acquaintance.

00:40:59.760 | Mark, Alan received 2% of the stock in the company,

00:41:02.880 | put away the certificates

00:41:03.920 | and didn't think about it again for several years

00:41:05.760 | until one day he was served with a lawsuit.

00:41:08.280 | The suit alleged that the company had breached a contract

00:41:11.320 | to develop a particular program for a customer.

00:41:13.920 | The failure to deliver the program on time

00:41:15.760 | had cost the customer millions of dollars.

00:41:17.920 | He was now suing for $25 million.

00:41:20.640 | Alan was named as a defendant, together with the company,

00:41:23.680 | which was primarily a service business

00:41:25.280 | with no substantial assets.

00:41:27.480 | It was clear that the real target in the case was Alan

00:41:30.440 | and not the company.

00:41:31.800 | Alan had $3 million in stocks and bonds

00:41:34.320 | and several brokerage accounts.

00:41:35.680 | And this was the prize the plaintiff was after.

00:41:38.800 | The case was disturbing.

00:41:39.880 | From a legal standpoint, Alan, as a minority shareholder,

00:41:42.840 | not even an officer or director,

00:41:44.680 | had no liability for any obligations of the company.

00:41:47.880 | Even if the damages were caused, as alleged,

00:41:50.600 | Alan had no input or responsibility

00:41:52.720 | for the operations of the business.

00:41:54.680 | The case had been filed solely because the other side

00:41:57.480 | had run an asset search on all of the shareholders

00:41:59.680 | looking for a shakedown target.

00:42:01.520 | And they hit the jackpot when they found Alan's accounts.

00:42:04.560 | The attorney for the other side later admitted to us

00:42:06.800 | that if they hadn't found Alan's money,

00:42:08.880 | they wouldn't have filed the case.

00:42:10.640 | They had nobody else to go after.

00:42:12.480 | But now they had a perfect setup.

00:42:14.520 | Although Alan had no real liability,

00:42:17.160 | what happens in court is often different

00:42:18.840 | than what we think should happen.

00:42:20.480 | As a named defendant in the case,

00:42:22.400 | and the only one with money, Alan faced a difficult choice.

00:42:26.040 | Fight or settle?

00:42:27.760 | If he fought, there was a risk that he could lose the lawsuit

00:42:30.600 | with damages of several million dollars, plus attorney fees.

00:42:34.080 | That would probably wipe him out financially.

00:42:36.480 | If he won the case, it would still cost $100,000 to $150,000

00:42:40.680 | in legal fees and expenses,

00:42:42.400 | and would absorb much of his time and emotions

00:42:44.480 | for at least the next few years.

00:42:46.320 | The lawyer for the other side knew how to play the game.

00:42:49.400 | After several months of painful negotiations,

00:42:52.120 | Alan settled the case for $450,000.

00:42:55.440 | It was difficult for him to pay the money,

00:42:57.080 | mostly from an emotional standpoint,

00:42:59.040 | because he had done nothing wrong.

00:43:01.040 | But he was trapped and outmaneuvered, and he had no choice.

00:43:04.640 | By holding his money in an unprotected form,

00:43:06.760 | easily discovered and reachable, he was a vulnerable target.

00:43:10.400 | The proper strategy, and the one Alan now uses,

00:43:12.640 | is to limit access to personal financial information

00:43:15.040 | and shield assets from potential claims.

00:43:17.600 | That will minimize the threat from these types of cases.

00:43:20.960 | That is the end of the stories I will share with you.

00:43:23.000 | If you go out looking for them,

00:43:24.120 | you will find many yourself.

00:43:27.560 | I am convinced, at this point in time,

00:43:30.480 | that it is impossible, no matter how prudent

00:43:33.840 | and careful you are in your affairs,

00:43:36.080 | as all of us try to be,

00:43:37.840 | it is impossible to be sufficiently prudent

00:43:41.560 | that you would eliminate the possibility

00:43:44.760 | that you would be found guilty in some form of case.

00:43:49.600 | So this is the same conviction I came to

00:43:51.640 | with regard to criminal law.

00:43:53.640 | Why did I talk about, is the importance of you

00:43:55.920 | protecting yourself from being arrested

00:43:57.720 | and protecting yourself from the police?

00:43:59.400 | Because you are guilty today.

00:44:03.080 | Same thing, you are negligent and liable today.

00:44:07.320 | So, since you don't know where those risks are,

00:44:09.640 | you don't know what they are.

00:44:11.000 | You don't know what happened 10 years ago

00:44:13.320 | when you were operating a business without a corporation.

00:44:16.280 | You better get busy today and do your best

00:44:18.760 | to protect yourself when we're asset protection planning.

00:44:21.800 | That's the major problem we're protecting against.

00:44:24.920 | As I close out the show, I want to emphasize to you,

00:44:26.800 | there are other risks that also fall in

00:44:30.080 | under asset protection planning.

00:44:31.760 | Thus far, I have focused exclusively in this show

00:44:34.640 | on civil litigation, the concept of negligence,

00:44:38.080 | liability, et cetera, and you're facing civil litigation.

00:44:41.440 | But there are other risks which also have to come into play.

00:44:45.120 | For example, bankruptcy.

00:44:47.280 | Now, I hope that you take my advice

00:44:49.040 | that you don't borrow money recklessly,

00:44:51.640 | that you don't put yourself in a circumstance

00:44:53.680 | where you are going to be finally,

00:44:56.600 | you're living dangerously and you're just thinking,

00:44:58.520 | "Well, I'm just going to file bankruptcy

00:45:00.000 | if something falls apart."

00:45:02.200 | But the reality is many people wind up in bankruptcy

00:45:05.960 | who were not reckless, who were not negligent.

00:45:09.160 | Now, that can be because of a medical condition.

00:45:13.360 | That can be because you were forced into bankruptcy

00:45:15.600 | by somebody who wanted to collect on some debt of some kind.

00:45:20.080 | So, bankruptcy planning is another risk as part of this.

00:45:23.600 | Any of us could wind up in bankruptcy,

00:45:26.720 | even if you don't borrow money.

00:45:29.480 | I repeat, any of us, no matter how much

00:45:33.160 | of a Dave Ramsey acolyte you are,

00:45:35.200 | 'cause you don't borrow money,

00:45:36.120 | any of us can be forced into bankruptcy.

00:45:38.120 | That is another huge risk.

00:45:39.360 | And bankruptcy planning has to be part

00:45:41.600 | of asset protection planning.

00:45:43.240 | Another major risk involves divorce.

00:45:46.240 | One of the biggest challenges that we face

00:45:48.400 | in the modern world is protecting assets from divorce.

00:45:51.200 | Very, very difficult area of practice.

00:45:54.720 | Because of course, none of us think

00:45:56.400 | we're going to get divorced,

00:45:57.240 | otherwise why would we have gotten married?

00:45:58.920 | None of us want to get divorced,

00:46:00.200 | but no matter how diligently you and I work,

00:46:03.640 | no matter how hard we are at maintaining our marriages,

00:46:07.080 | loving our wives, loving our husbands,

00:46:09.200 | making sure that you're diligent,

00:46:10.920 | can't predict what the future holds.

00:46:13.920 | You cannot predict it.

00:46:16.080 | And though you were not at fault in a divorce,

00:46:20.360 | you can't control another person.

00:46:22.000 | And yet your assets can be utterly wiped out by divorce.

00:46:27.520 | So do we have to bring in divorce planning

00:46:30.400 | as a component of asset protection planning?

00:46:32.200 | It's a major, major challenge.

00:46:34.840 | And then finally, of course, tax issues.

00:46:37.320 | Dealing with the IRS or local tax authorities

00:46:41.040 | or state tax authorities, it's tough.

00:46:44.760 | And don't think for an instant,

00:46:46.760 | though you are honest and upright in all of your dealings,

00:46:50.040 | don't think for an instant that the IRS

00:46:53.680 | or your local state tax court is your friend.

00:46:55.960 | There are many, many examples you can find

00:47:01.520 | of egregious abuse by taxing authorities.

00:47:06.520 | And here's the problem.

00:47:09.840 | If you want to talk about an opponent,

00:47:12.160 | a legal or financial opponent that is one of the toughest,

00:47:16.240 | the IRS has immense latitude, immense latitude

00:47:21.240 | with their ability to come after you.

00:47:26.920 | And I consider some of the perspective,

00:47:29.320 | did you know if the IRS alleges

00:47:30.880 | that you owe them more than $50,000,

00:47:32.800 | then they can cancel your passport

00:47:35.680 | and refuse to allow you to leave the country?

00:47:38.720 | Someday in the near future,

00:47:40.440 | I'm gonna do a show on debtors' prisons.

00:47:42.800 | A lot of people have this idea, this misconception

00:47:45.120 | that debtors' prisons are a thing of the past.

00:47:47.480 | Nonsense.

00:47:48.560 | They just look different

00:47:49.400 | than they did in Charles Dickens' day.

00:47:51.320 | But one of them is dealing with the IRS.

00:47:54.280 | There are others as well,

00:47:55.400 | especially involving divorce courts

00:47:56.920 | and child support alimony payments.

00:47:59.000 | So we'll do that show another day.

00:48:00.960 | But another one I have is slavery.

00:48:02.920 | Slavery hasn't disappeared, it's just changed forms.

00:48:05.640 | Now we put slaves in prisons,

00:48:07.160 | keep 5% of the US population there,

00:48:09.040 | instead of keeping slaves working in the fields.

00:48:12.680 | Anyway, we'll do those shows another time.

00:48:14.520 | So the IRS is a tough opponent,

00:48:17.200 | and you have to consider tax planning

00:48:19.400 | and dealing with, if you're in a battle with the IRS.

00:48:23.000 | It's not enough for you to be above board.

00:48:25.800 | It's not enough for you to declare all your income,

00:48:28.180 | disclose all your assets everywhere in the world.

00:48:30.680 | It's not enough for you to do the right thing with the IRS.

00:48:33.560 | You still face risk with them.

00:48:35.680 | Two stories I'll read you

00:48:36.920 | from the end of the Goldstein Fowler asset protection book

00:48:39.880 | where they're dealing with this topic of asset protection

00:48:42.440 | and the IRS.

00:48:44.560 | It says,

00:48:46.600 | it's important to preface this chapter

00:48:49.960 | by saying that if you are liable for a tax,

00:48:51.920 | you should resolve the issue by paying

00:48:54.200 | or otherwise settling the debt.

00:48:55.800 | In egregious circumstances,

00:48:57.040 | thwarting the IRS's efforts to assess or collect a tax

00:48:59.580 | may constitute a felony.

00:49:01.100 | At the same time, there are instances

00:49:02.720 | where the IRS is overaggressive in its collection efforts

00:49:05.480 | and/or sometimes erroneously pursues people

00:49:08.280 | for taxes they don't actually owe.

00:49:10.400 | Despite a plethora of cases that demonstrate this,

00:49:12.760 | some think they have nothing to fear from the IRS

00:49:15.040 | so long as they are honest taxpayers.

00:49:17.120 | The following real life experiences show

00:49:19.500 | this is simply not so.

00:49:21.500 | An attorney named Jeff is married with four children.

00:49:23.760 | His wife Linda is a stay-at-home mother

00:49:25.320 | who has not worked for many years.

00:49:27.060 | One day to her surprise,

00:49:28.300 | she received an IRS 1099 form in the mail

00:49:31.180 | generated by a company she'd never heard of

00:49:33.340 | reporting that the company had paid her $350,000.

00:49:36.980 | She does not report this as income

00:49:38.800 | since she never received any money.

00:49:40.800 | The IRS, however, claimed she was liable

00:49:42.840 | for over $100,000 in taxes

00:49:45.160 | based solely on a one-half page, unsigned document

00:49:48.720 | sent out by a company that shortly thereafter

00:49:50.680 | went out of business.

00:49:52.020 | Jeff used his legal expertise to argue

00:49:54.040 | that the IRS has no proof of Linda receiving such income.

00:49:57.200 | In fact, he said if the IRS could locate the money,

00:49:59.720 | he'd split it with them 50/50.

00:50:01.800 | The IRS disagreed without even auditing the company

00:50:04.440 | that generated the form and a legal battle ensued.

00:50:06.840 | Over eight years later, the issue remains unresolved.

00:50:09.840 | Fortunately, Jeff has experience representing clients

00:50:12.240 | with IRS problems, which saves them

00:50:14.120 | tens of thousands of dollars in attorney's fees

00:50:16.280 | they'd otherwise have to pay.

00:50:17.960 | Nonetheless, Jeff never figured

00:50:20.360 | he'd have his own wife for a client.

00:50:22.320 | The IRS contacted Chuck, a real estate developer,

00:50:24.720 | and claimed he owed $30,000 in back taxes.

00:50:27.760 | After his CPA went to bat for him,

00:50:29.400 | the tax debt was reduced to around $8,000.

00:50:32.720 | Chuck cut a check for that amount and mailed it to the IRS.

00:50:35.920 | A few weeks later, it was returned

00:50:37.480 | with a letter stating the case was closed

00:50:39.200 | and the matter dropped concerning his alleged liability.

00:50:42.040 | Several years later, the IRS contacted Chuck again.

00:50:45.040 | They said he'd never have paid the original tax debt

00:50:47.160 | and now owed the IRS over $50,000

00:50:49.520 | due to penalties and interest.

00:50:51.140 | This was based on the $30,000 original assessment,

00:50:53.720 | not on the subsequent correct assessment of $8,000.

00:50:56.940 | Chuck protested that he had mailed them a check

00:50:59.120 | to pay the debt several years earlier.

00:51:01.320 | The IRS stated they had no record

00:51:03.160 | of ever receiving payment

00:51:04.760 | and that the case had never been closed.

00:51:06.800 | What happened as a result?

00:51:08.160 | Chuck had $30,000 seized from his bank account

00:51:10.960 | along with two plots of land,

00:51:12.360 | which were sold to pay off what the IRS claimed he owed,

00:51:15.380 | even though he'd already sent them.

00:51:17.820 | Whether it is incompetence or disregard for law

00:51:20.640 | that sometimes leads federal and state tax agencies

00:51:22.920 | direct the lives of law-abiding citizens,

00:51:25.200 | the need for asset protection

00:51:26.560 | against such threats is indisputable.

00:51:29.680 | So, and it goes on and talks about

00:51:30.880 | how to plan against the IRS.

00:51:33.360 | The point is this,

00:51:34.440 | don't get complacent even about things like the IRS.

00:51:39.240 | If you were to go back,

00:51:40.160 | one of the things that finally last year,

00:51:44.340 | the Operation Chokepoint was closed

00:51:47.080 | by the Department of Justice.

00:51:48.760 | It was Operation Chokepoint, if you're unfamiliar,

00:51:51.160 | was an initiative that was begun

00:51:53.200 | under President Obama in the United States,

00:51:55.320 | where back in 2013,

00:51:59.160 | various disfavored businesses

00:52:01.720 | started to find themselves in all kinds of problems,

00:52:05.840 | where all of a sudden their bank accounts were being closed

00:52:08.520 | and they're having trouble.

00:52:10.360 | The first people who brought the subject,

00:52:13.240 | the story to public notice were porn actresses

00:52:16.520 | and payday lenders,

00:52:17.920 | who suddenly find themselves with their banks closed down,

00:52:20.680 | bank accounts closed down for no reason.

00:52:23.080 | And they hadn't had any overdrafts or anything else,

00:52:25.940 | but they're just, and they go and ask their banks,

00:52:27.920 | like, "Why are you closing our accounts?"

00:52:29.520 | And I said, "Well, you're high risk."

00:52:31.200 | And so of course, the Obama administration

00:52:33.720 | denied that there was anything involved,

00:52:36.000 | just like they did when the IRS

00:52:38.360 | was not issuing appropriate tax exemptions

00:52:42.900 | for right-wing political groups.

00:52:45.240 | I said, "Oh, it was just nothing at all."

00:52:46.880 | Well, in hindsight, it was an organization,

00:52:49.280 | it was an action called Operation Chokepoint.

00:52:52.040 | And the government was bringing pressure on banks

00:52:55.920 | to diminish and stop doing business

00:53:00.060 | with various businesses that were disfavored.

00:53:03.000 | And this was, again, pornography,

00:53:05.680 | payday lending, fireworks, online gambling,

00:53:11.840 | home-based charities, as seen on TV,

00:53:14.200 | people who sell tobacco online

00:53:16.080 | or pharmaceuticals online, et cetera,

00:53:18.800 | firearms dealers, pawn shops, et cetera.

00:53:22.360 | These were all kind of abused by this.

00:53:24.600 | And this is the same thing

00:53:25.960 | that is happening again and again today.

00:53:27.740 | And it's happening sometimes overtly

00:53:30.340 | and sometimes covertly.

00:53:32.380 | One of the major challenges

00:53:33.780 | that many organizations have

00:53:34.940 | is the law is being brought to bear upon banks.

00:53:38.660 | I won't go on and on against it.

00:53:41.980 | So the point is, what do you do

00:53:43.660 | when you're involved in something

00:53:44.820 | that is entirely fine, entirely legal,

00:53:47.780 | but all of a sudden now your bank

00:53:49.060 | won't do business with you?

00:53:50.480 | Now, in this case, I'm getting a field of the IRS,

00:53:54.020 | but I consider the weaponization of this stuff

00:53:56.660 | to be a real problem

00:53:57.640 | with the IRS's whistleblowing program.

00:53:59.600 | You want to have your life be nuts?

00:54:01.360 | Recognize that anybody can make a claim

00:54:04.360 | as a whistleblower to the IRS,

00:54:05.660 | an alleged tax evasion.

00:54:07.880 | And if tax evasion or fraud is found,

00:54:10.760 | then that whistleblower is entitled

00:54:12.720 | to receive a portion of the claim.

00:54:15.160 | So don't ignore things like the IRS

00:54:21.720 | because you think, "Well, I just pay my taxes,

00:54:26.620 | declare all my income, pay my taxes, everything is fine."

00:54:29.420 | That doesn't mean a thing in today's world.

00:54:32.580 | Sorry, that was too strong.

00:54:34.140 | That's good.

00:54:35.900 | That's a good start, but it's not enough.

00:54:38.520 | When your ideological opponents

00:54:42.300 | who think that you shouldn't be a payday lender

00:54:45.220 | or think that you shouldn't sell guns

00:54:46.740 | or who think that you shouldn't be a porn actress

00:54:51.620 | or who think that you shouldn't be

00:54:53.040 | on the Southern Poverty Law Center hate group list,

00:54:56.600 | and now all of a sudden

00:54:57.440 | you're dropped by your credit card merchants,

00:54:59.000 | you're dropped by your bank accounts,

00:55:00.920 | you don't think that the IRS can't be involved in that.

00:55:04.640 | We face a tough world

00:55:07.220 | where people who are your ideological enemies,

00:55:11.440 | wherever you are,

00:55:12.680 | feel that the best way that they can destroy you

00:55:15.920 | is instead of arguing with you on the field of ideas,

00:55:17.900 | they want to destroy you with the force of law.

00:55:20.340 | So I hope that I have put a little bit of reason for you.

00:55:24.440 | I know I was strong in some of what I said.

00:55:26.600 | I hope that I've been appropriately modest

00:55:30.800 | to point out to you some risks.

00:55:32.800 | I tried to put a little bit of fear in you.

00:55:34.560 | I tried to use a little bit of sensationalism in this show

00:55:38.240 | because I want you to move off of zero onto go.

00:55:43.000 | I want you to do something

00:55:45.440 | because as we'll see in subsequent shows,

00:55:48.920 | if you don't act today,

00:55:51.000 | you won't be properly protected

00:55:54.560 | when the circumstances arise

00:55:56.020 | that you have no concept of today.

00:55:57.720 | You can't buy life insurance

00:56:00.660 | when you're diagnosed with cancer.

00:56:02.500 | You got to buy life insurance

00:56:03.700 | when you're young and healthy and don't need it.

00:56:06.420 | You can't buy disability income insurance

00:56:08.300 | when you fall off your roof.

00:56:10.180 | You got to buy disability income insurance

00:56:12.420 | when you're young and healthy and don't need it.

00:56:16.240 | You can't buy asset protection planning

00:56:19.280 | when a lawsuit is filed against you.

00:56:21.820 | You got to take the actions today to protect your assets

00:56:27.160 | when you are rich and stable and prudent

00:56:31.840 | and you can't foresee any risk

00:56:33.440 | because when three years from now,

00:56:37.200 | you go and start a company

00:56:38.280 | and just make a simple mistake of some kind,

00:56:40.520 | as in operate it without a protective entity

00:56:44.280 | or hire an employee who subsequently

00:56:46.220 | sues you for sexual harassment,

00:56:48.300 | even though you had no harassment,

00:56:49.660 | had no contact with them whatsoever,

00:56:51.100 | but because you rebuffed their advances,

00:56:53.540 | their sexual advances,

00:56:54.620 | they accuse you of sexual harassment,

00:56:56.680 | whatever the circumstances are,

00:57:00.160 | you've got to do it today.

00:57:02.860 | Here's the good news.

00:57:03.860 | If you feel like I'm too strong,

00:57:06.140 | if you commit fraud,

00:57:07.900 | if you commit criminal wrongdoing,

00:57:09.420 | you will be found out

00:57:11.040 | and your asset protection planning

00:57:12.840 | can be unwound most of the time.

00:57:15.840 | So don't worry.

00:57:17.360 | If you are an evil person,

00:57:21.520 | there's really very little you can do.

00:57:25.280 | But if you are an upright person,

00:57:27.240 | a good person, a moral person,

00:57:29.020 | just concerned about protecting the things

00:57:31.520 | that you've put together,

00:57:32.880 | stay tuned in this series.

00:57:34.280 | There's a lot you can do.

00:57:36.040 | Hope you have a great day.

00:57:37.420 | Ad for today at the end of today,

00:57:39.240 | new products will be coming out next week.

00:57:40.680 | I'll share more announcements

00:57:41.920 | starting next week.

00:57:43.240 | I will be, put it this way,

00:57:44.720 | I will be much more stable in my production,

00:57:47.760 | in my location, et cetera,

00:57:49.380 | starting very soon.

00:57:51.320 | And you will see that reflected in the content.

00:57:53.280 | But for today, I would encourage,

00:57:54.800 | if you haven't yet purchased my credit card program,

00:57:58.120 | I would encourage you to go to

00:57:58.960 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcards.

00:58:01.280 | I'm sorry, credit card course,

00:58:02.300 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse.

00:58:04.320 | And if you have a credit card,

00:58:06.100 | or if you think you'll ever have a credit card,

00:58:09.320 | then I would recommend to you that you buy my course.

00:58:11.280 | And here's why.

00:58:12.240 | I try to tease you,

00:58:13.200 | and some of the times I do these little blurbs,

00:58:14.840 | I try to tease you to go and check it out.

00:58:17.560 | And I try to use things that are a little bit sensational

00:58:19.880 | to try to do it.

00:58:21.280 | But the whole point is not sensationalism.

00:58:23.360 | The point is for you to think in advance

00:58:25.880 | about the future that is unknowable to you today.

00:58:29.920 | So for example,

00:58:30.960 | if you think there could ever be a circumstance

00:58:33.680 | in which you would have credit card debt,

00:58:36.040 | as in, and my point is you have credit cards.

00:58:38.080 | If you have credit cards,

00:58:38.920 | it would ever have credit cards.

00:58:39.740 | And there's a point at which you might have credit card debt

00:58:41.440 | no matter how committed you are to paying it off.

00:58:43.720 | There's a point at which you might have credit card debt.

00:58:45.440 | And there are lots of good circumstances

00:58:47.040 | under which we'd say that's a good thing to do.

00:58:48.780 | You need to think today about getting in place

00:58:51.020 | the resources you would need in that circumstance.

00:58:53.720 | That's why you need my credit card course.

00:58:56.540 | You need to think today about the infrastructure

00:58:58.740 | that you would establish to protect yourself

00:59:00.600 | if you wound up in credit card debt

00:59:01.920 | and wound up battling with your credit card companies.

00:59:05.360 | That's why you need my credit card course.

00:59:07.320 | Could go on and on.

00:59:08.400 | But this is the essence of financial planning.

00:59:11.000 | Forethought, imagining scenarios

00:59:13.600 | and thinking about what you can do today

00:59:15.040 | to protect yourself from a future unknowable risk.

00:59:18.980 | Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse.

00:59:22.240 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse.

00:59:24.560 | Put it this way, it is the cheapest product

00:59:26.360 | I have yet sold you.

00:59:27.600 | And it is probably the cheapest product

00:59:29.080 | I will ever sell you.

00:59:30.080 | It's 40 bucks, $39.

00:59:32.360 | And it is absolutely worth multiples of that.

00:59:35.680 | Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse.

00:59:38.080 | And I'll be back with you very soon.

00:59:40.600 | The LA Kings holiday pack is back.

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00:59:49.520 | Buy today and you'll receive an additional game for free.

00:59:52.400 | Don't miss out, visit lakings.com/holiday today.

RPF0604-Asset_Protection_Planning-What_Is_The_Problem_Were_Protecting_Against