Asset Protection Privacy

The Right to Privacy is always an issue in law because there is no specific amendment to “The Right to Privacy” in the US Constitution or The Bill of Rights. The Rights to Privacy derive from common law and are sited by precedence from different cases and statutes.

The Right to Privacy in asset protection planning falls into the same situation. There is no ultimate right to total privacy or the right to not report income and assets. Most governments and statues offer options within these legal boundaries. With a well-designed plan, one can find privacy.

Think of it like this. A house may have a front door and a back door. The front door is visible to all the neighbors when compared to the back door. You enter the front door, all the neighbors know. When you enter the back door, quietly and without commotion, very few people know. Either way, you have arrived at the same destination inside the house.

You can report your assets personally (the front door) or report your assets through a corporation or LLC (the back door). Regardless, you have reported your assets. This privacy is rooted in the amendments that bar double taxation. Though asset protection plans are not for the purpose of reducing taxation, sound asset protection plan designs take advantage of these pathways for your assets. They don’t necessarily hide them; asset protection devises the routes of ownership (title) and control, placing them on separate pathways. This in itself creates privacy.

With rampant identity theft, and criminal schemes such as "phishing" and "pharming", it makes sense to keep your valuable assets away from your personal name or from being reported under your social security number or any other easily traced identifier.

When assets are transferred into a trust or a business entity, the assets are no longer held or reported in an individual person’s name. Therefore, with such asset protection privacy, it is much more difficult for criminals to either find or access account information or the assets themselves. Even if the individual’s identity is compromised and their accounts are accessed, the assets that are held in entities should be unaffected and therefore available for transfer to the individual’s new accounts for bill payment, etc., while the identity theft is being resolved.

Common sense would guide anyone to the notion that there is protection in privacy and that there is vulnerability with exposure; because we can’t limit all of our exposures, we should guard our privacy.