AttorneysEd Center

If your practice involves wealth planning, this program applies not only to your clients, but to you and your own practice as well. You should at least have a general familiarity with concepts involving protecting individually-held assets (referred to as “Level I” Planning) and with concepts involving protecting the assets of a business or professional practice (referred to as “Level II” Planning), and in this program, Barry Engel discusses how you can borrow planning concepts from Level I Planning and apply them in the context of Level II Planning. You and your clients will be able to benefit from this process by reducing your, and their, annual malpractice, D&O or E&O premium outlay as well as by providing a safety net in case professional or business indemnity coverage is ever denied by the carrier or is otherwise lost. Some of the Level II Planning strategies covered include: 1) a business or professional practice as the settlor of its own trust; 2) a business or professional practice undergoing a divisive reorganization to accomplish asset protection goals; 3) a business or professional practice forming and funding one or more related entities to which assets are contributed; 4) a business or professional practice selling its assets to a separately owned company and then leasing the assets back from the purchasing company; and 5) “liquefying” the equity of a business or professional practice and contributing the proceeds to an integrated estate planning trust.