Exploring Immigration Options: The Best Visas for Investors, Executives & Skilled Workers
by: Elizabeth Blandon, Board-Certified Immigration Attorney
For investors, business executives and skilled workers, there are several excellent immigration programs available that can help you to live and work in the United States –in most cases you will also be able to bring your immediate family members.
By Phillip B. Rarick, Esq., Miami Trust Attorney
State laws provide numerous legal opportunities for protecting your family’s hard earned wealth. See my recent article: Asset Protection for the Small Business Owner: 7 Key Strategies.
An important domestic strategy is a Domestic Asset Protection Trust or DAPT. Because of the ever more stringent IRS reporting requirements for off-shore entities, DAPT’s are becoming a popular asset protection tool. See Hybrid Asset Protection Trust
By Phil Rarick, Weston Estate Planning Attorney
This report is a reminder that the FBAR or Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Account is due June 30. The FBAR is required for U.S. persons having a financial interest or signature authority over one or more foreign financial accounts, including a bank account, brokerage account, mutual fund, trust, estate, pension, cash value life insurance, or other type of foreign financial account having an aggregate value over $10,000 at any time during 2015.
Note: A U.S. person may have a reporting obligation even though the foreign financial account does not generate any taxable income.
By Phil Rarick, Weston Business Attorney
Here is a Big Red Flag: bundling multiple investment properties in the same LLC. This is a mistake we are seeing more and more often: a real estate investor has six condo rental homes; all rental homes are owned by the same LLC. This investor has essentially defeated the purpose of the LLC. A slip and fall claim on one of the properties would expose all six to the claim.
Bundling multiple investment properties in one LLC
By Phil Rarick, Esq.
The sole reason most trusts exist is to serve the needs of the beneficiaries. It is not an employment program for the trustee or any other person. Therefore, a core test for whether a trust is performing – and performing efficiently – is to examine whether the needs of the beneficiaries are being met as instructed by the trust, and whether the purposes of the trust are being fulfilled.
If you are a beneficiary of a trust, here are some warning signs that a trust is not performing in an efficient way to meet your needs:
By Phil Rarick, Esq.
Here is a simple fact: most small businesses cannot afford or even survive a major dispute between partners if the dispute ends up in court. Such disputes can doom the small business due to interruption of the company business, distract the principal partners from focusing on growth, and soak up all capital needed to sustain the company.
The following are 5 Take Away Points for avoiding court intervention in your business:
By: Phillip B. Rarick, Esq.
Most divorce judgments call for one of the parties to obtain a life insurance policy for securing the payment of child support, alimony or some other financial obligation. Let’s assume the obligation is solely child support: a potential mistake is failure to secure payment of the policy premiums by use of an irrevocable Children’s Safe Harbor Trust structured as a spendthrift trust.
For securing the payment of child support, the settlement agreement should have specific language that may read as follows:
By Phil Rarick, Esq., Miami Trust Attorney
Family law attorneys are increasingly using trusts to secure and safeguard the payment of financial obligations in their marital settlement agreements. Such trusts can provide the following key benefits:
By Phillip B. Rarick, Esq., Weston Asset Protection Attorney
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a current, hot selling book written by a physician and advising how to get things right by implementing commonsense systems.
In today’s modern medicine, coupled with our information age, where virtually every procedure can be scrutinized by an “expert” easily found on Google, it should be standard procedure for every doctor to have a comprehensive asset protection plan – one that is up-to-date to meet the challenges of our fast-changing legal system.
Florida Trust & Probate Attorneys Blog
