Three legal ways to protect your assets from lawsuits, divorce, and Medicaid claims. Domestic trusts work in only 17 to 18 states. Offshore trusts offer the strongest protection. Medicaid trusts require a five-year waiting period before assets are shielded.
Chapters
There are lots of valid and justifiable reasons why you might want to keep your money hidden and protected. Lawsuits, future ex-spouses, Medicaid, whatever it may be, here are 3 ways to do it. The first way is a domestic asset protection trust. But this type of trust provides protection and you can access the funds as a permissible beneficiary of the trust. The downside to these, they're only legal in 17 or 18 states. The next way, a foreign asset protection trust. You may have heard it referred to as an offshore trust. These trusts offer the greatest protection because they are created outside of the United States. These are not illegal and they are not created for illegally gotten money. The third way is a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust. These trusts are created to protect assets from Medicaid recovery if long-term care is needed in the future. The downside to a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust is that the asset has to be in there for 5 years before it is protected from Medicaid.