Wealth Protection: The Bulletproof Strategy to Securing Your Assets

You’ve spent years saving money and building a business or establishing your professional credentials. At Dominion, we believe you should be able to keep your money after you earn it, even in the face of aggressive lawsuits, high tax bills, and other potential dangers to your wealth.

We specialize in effective wealth protection, which not only safeguards your liquid capital and your estate against the above risks, but also ensures that your money continues to work for you for years to come. Let’s take a closer look at the bulletproof, time-tested strategy we use at Dominion for your benefit.

The Core Components of Asset Protection

Comprehensive, strong asset protection for high-net-worth individuals like yourself isn't just about safeguarding your money from lawsuits, though that does receive a major focus. Our asset protection strategies have three fundamental pillars.

Asset Protection

First is, of course, core asset protection. Dominion primarily provides asset protection services through foreign asset protection trusts (FAPTs). 

In a nutshell, a foreign asset protection trust is a special trust instrument set up in an offshore jurisdiction. Offshore doesn’t mean illegal in any sense; it just means that the jurisdiction is somewhere other than your home country.

For example, if you are based in the US, you can set up a foreign asset protection trust in the UK, in the Cook Islands, the Bahamas, and anywhere else.

Dominion will help you choose the right jurisdiction and the right bank for your asset protection purposes. A foreign asset protection trust works like this:

• You, the trust’s grantor, name any beneficiaries for the trust and appoint a trustee
• The trustee is a third-party individual lawyer or company who oversees the trust and manages its assets
• Depending on what your trust documents say, you and any other beneficiaries may receive dividends or other distributions periodically or at a set time in the future

In any case, you transfer ownership of the assets in the foreign asset protection trust to the trustee. Then, if someone tries to take those assets from you or compel you to give them up – think of a court or an aggressive creditor – you can legitimately say you don't have access to those assets and can't fulfill their request. When developed properly, this is an effectively ironclad means of legal defense.

Degradation Avoidance

However, asset protection at Dominion is also about degradation avoidance: minimizing how your wealth diminishes over time.

The best way to do this is to invest your assets in stable investment strategies and instruments. This strategy is time-tested and backed by decades of case law. 

When our financial experts set up your trust and choose the instruments for your investments, they’ll ensure that your estate and assets grow beyond inflation and guarantee tax efficiency (typically by taking advantage of existing tax laws).

Growing your wealth beyond inflation is important so your money truly grows and increases your spending power, rather than just stagnating. In any case, degradation avoidance will ensure that your money stays useful for both you and any future descendants you may wish to help in the future.

Proactive Opportunity Mapping

The third primary pillar of asset protection at Dominion is proactive opportunity mapping, which involves predicting, analyzing, and taking advantage of new wealth growth opportunities. Our financial experts do this by:

• Continually analyzing the current financial and tax sectors
• Networking with banks and other actors in these industries
• Developing partnerships to expand infrastructure for the benefit of our clients

In the long run, you’ll have broader access to new investment options, smarter insurance plays, beneficial tax structures, and enhanced legal tools. All of these elements combine to not just maintain the wealth of our clients but also increase it over time.

This is a core, fundamental element of true asset protection. After all, it doesn't matter if your wealth is protected against creditors or lawsuit plaintiffs if it diminishes over time, or if it vanishes quickly once you start to spend it (think once you start receiving distributions after you retire, for instance).

You Need All Three Components for Effective Asset Security

Above, we mentioned how these components are fundamental pillars of our asset protection strategy at Dominion. 

You can think of these as the legs of the chair; you need all three to be strong and secure for the chair to function properly. Similarly, you can't neglect or ignore any of these asset protection components if you want to keep your estate safe in perpetuity.

For instance, say that you have an asset protection strategy that only focuses on protecting your wealth against legal troubles. 

At first, that might seem like it’s enough. But in reality, it leaves your estate open to problems like massive tax bills from the IRS or your money simply dwindling away because you didn’t use it wisely.

What good will it do your grandchildren if you once had enough wealth to set them up for life, but didn’t take proactive steps now to safeguard that wealth for their adult ambitions? 

Dominion’s asset protection strategy accounts for all of these possibilities and then some. It’s why we have a reputation as being the best asset protection service providers in this industry.

Why is Asset Protection Important?

If you've only recently come into a lot of money, whether through a successful business venture, an inheritance, or something else, you may not know why exactly asset protection is so critical. 

If you've ever heard about someone with millions of dollars losing it all in an unfortunate court encounter or a loan creditor, you know exactly the kinds of hazards you can face now that you have a lot of money.

But you’ll only really grasp the value of asset protection when you consider each of its major benefits in turn.

Legal/Financial Defense

Asset protection is obviously very important for your legal and financial defense. A proper, well-written asset protection strategy that’s carried out by the right experts will effectively insulate you from legal and financial threats for now and well into the future.

Someone can sue you and not get access to the assets in your asset protection trust, for example. A creditor won’t be able to demand that you fork over money or assets in your trust in order to pay down bills or debts, particularly those associated with your company or other business venture.

This kind of defense is difficult to secure in any other way, especially given the complexity of laws in the US and beyond. The right trust stands firm against all sorts of legal and financial threats – think of it as a fortress your opponents will only be able to uselessly throw themselves against.

Estate Security

In addition to defense, asset protection provides estate security in an important way. In fact, many people use trusts for estate security, including those who don’t have millions upon millions of dollars to protect.

Placing key assets in your trust, like real estate, inheritance money, and other assets, prevents you or others from spending them or getting rid of those assets by accident. In this way, you can ensure that your estate remains intact and beneficial to your family in the future, especially after you pass away.

Furthermore, the proactive opportunity mapping pillar can ensure that your estate grows and becomes more valuable before you actually need to start getting into it. 

This is how people with money make more money; they might still work jobs or earn salaries, but the truly wealthy grow their money into more cash, like a well-cared-for financial garden.

If you’ve spent your lifetime building up a fortune you hope your family will benefit from, an asset protection trust with Dominion is the best way to ensure that future.

Long-Term Financial Stability

Of course, asset protection with Dominion also provides you with long-term financial security. If you come to us with $10 million, and you never want to work a day in your life again, we can make that happen. 

Even better, we can make it so you have plenty of spending money and can enjoy an extravagant lifestyle, all without lifting a finger for someone else.

That kind of financial stability only comes with comprehensive, well-rounded asset protection that considers wealth growth and degradation avoidance in conjunction with wealth protection. That’s why our strategy has three distinct pillars – it’s not just about anticipating potential legal pitfalls.

It’s about using your money smartly and as effectively as possible. When you work with Dominion, you don’t have to do all the management and research to make this happen, either!

Contact Dominion Today

In the end, bulletproof wealth protection is a matter of careful planning and preparation. Don’t try to do it alone; safeguard your wealth with Dominion at your side.

Our infrastructure, comprised of financial planners, legal advisers, and trust lawyers, is collectively well-equipped to help you protect your wealth, keep it from degrading over time, and ensure that you can take advantage of new financial opportunities as they appear. 

Get in touch with one of our specialists today to discover more about your options.