Casey Research International - Trust Guidebook
Dear Concerned Reader,
Maybe you think it’s just other people who live on the lawsuit firing line… and you live somewhere else. Think again.
The Legal Resource Network reports that 15 million lawsuits are filed in the US every year.
That works out to a new lawsuit for one out of every 12 adults each year… year after year. Unless you’re exceptionally lucky, sooner or later your turn will come. You’re not going to like it.
It’s no fluke that 80% of the world’s lawyers—over 1.2 million of them—work in the US. That’s where the action is.
Welcome to America…
… the playing field for more lawyers and more lawsuits than any other country in the world.
Your money is the trophy they’re competing for. Even if you don’t believe you’re in a high-risk business or profession… even if you always treat the people you deal with honestly and fairly… and even if you carry a super-size liability policy, an out-of-the-blue lawsuit can come crashing into your financial life at any time. And it can strip you of everything you’ve earned, everything you’ve built, and everything you’ve saved. All of it.
The ACE Group (specialists in insurance for high-net-worth individuals) recently noted that “America’s wealthiest families increasingly worry that their wealth alone makes them a target for a high-stakes liability lawsuit …”
Those ACE people are right. It’s not what you do, it’s what you own that attracts litigation. For the pros in the lawsuit business, any American who is noticeably wealthier than average qualifies as a target.
It used to be illegal, but now lawyers actively search for people to sue. They hunt. And when they go hunting, they look for the unprotected.
The reason: today, lawyers are allowed to keep a share of all the money they can squeeze out of a lawsuit target—contingency fees.
So for them, taking your family’s assets means payday. Liability insurance just makes you a juicier target; if they win, your policy is like a check in the mail.
And it’s so easy for them to start. They can file a suit for personal slander, commercial slander, personal injury, malpractice, product liability, on-the-job-injury, civil rights violation, unfair labor practice, unfaithful employee practice, even “psychological pain” … the list goes on and on.
And it doesn’t cost any more to file a lawsuit for $20 million than to sue for $200. For them, zeros are free… and very rewarding. Whatever the size of your liability insurance, expect the lawsuit to ask for more.
For you, those zeros can be a matter of financial life and death. One lawsuit could undo a lifetime of work and success. Financial cardiac arrest. Even if you don’t lose, the cost of defending yourself can be a disaster all on its own.
Unfortunately, no matter how much you want to believe a lawsuit won’t happen to you, the chances are high that you’ll have your turn being a target… and if all you do is wait for your number to come up, you’ll be an easy target.
So now is the time to “lawsuit proof” yourself. That means putting all your important assets far beyond the reach of predatory litigation. It’s the only thing that really stops them.
Why You Bought Fire Insurance
Think about how fire insurance works. If you wait until you smell smoke, it’s too late to get it. But insurance is easy and cheap to get if you get it now, before there’s a problem.
So how do you get protection from the lawsuit that sooner or later is likely to show up? And how do you transform yourself into an unattractive target?
The most reliable way to protect your family’s assets from aggressive lawsuits (and from other hazards that could demote you from Rich Man to Poor Man) is with an International Trust. Nothing else comes close in power and reliability. You keep tight management control over all the assets while your Trust puts up a brick wall against any attacker.
With that brick-wall protection in place, you can be certain that your assets are safe. And you lose your attractiveness as a target. Any attacker will know that even if he wins in court, there will be nothing to collect… and he won’t want to waste his time.
Lawsuit protection is just the start of a long list of advantages that an International Trust can deliver for you and your family. Here’s another big one.
The Seizure Problem… and Solution
Your Trust’s assets will be beyond the reach of no-warning seizures by any of the many government agencies that are authorized to grab property first and then dare you to prove they’ve made a mistake.
Dozens of government agencies now have the power to lock up your all bank accounts in the US, all your brokerage accounts in the US, even your home, based on the flimsiest hint that something might be wrong. It doesn’t matter what the underlying allegation is about—taxes, drugs, food safety, the environment, or something else.
It doesn’t even take a real allegation to make it happen. A single government employee’s suspicion is enough to push the bureaucratic launch button and start your nightmare.
They act without warning, and they can strip away all the cash from your US bank accounts and all investments from your US brokerage accounts without waiting for a hearing, a trial, or any other token of due process. If it’s in the US, it’s theirs whenever they say it is.
Yes, after they strike you can go to court to get your property back—but how will you hire a lawyer if your bank account has been frozen? And how will you pay your bills while the legal process is grinding on?
Forget what you learned in civics class. Sometimes a government agency just wants the property. The Institute for Justice concluded, “Under modern civil forfeiture laws … filling law enforcement’s coffers is often the primary purpose of the seizure.”
And sometimes it’s just the result of bureaucratic thinking. Their procedure book makes them do it. They can easily pick up any assets you keep in the US—but they can’t reach the assets you protect with an International Trust.
Your International Trust has that protective power because it’s subject to the laws of the country you select, not to the laws where you live.
Protection for Generation After Generation
An International Trust doesn’t come with a time limit. It can be perpetual. That makes it the ideal vehicle for estate planning.
First, you can use it to execute all the strategies for avoiding estate taxes that you’ll hear about if you visit a top-level estate-planning attorney. Later, the Trust does something no stay-at-home strategy can possibly accomplish—it disconnects from the US tax system. It disconnects completely. It disconnects forever.
Nothing could do more to promote the security and well-being of your heirs.
None of them will have a taxpaying obligation for the International Trust you establish. None of them will have a reporting obligation for it. Your Trust becomes lawfully silent and lawfully invisible—and it can accumulate and compound investment returns without slowing down to pay a dime in taxes. Your International Trust turns into a perpetual family bank… and it’s a tax-free bank with great growth potential.
Doug Casey, chairman of Casey Research, has publicly advised:“I cannot stress strongly enough that anyone who hopes to survive financially needs to internationalize.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Because without the protection of an International Trust, you could lose so much—maybe everything—to an aggressive lawsuit, a willful judge, or a debt-ridden government agency. Or your family’s wealth could be drained away slowly by the tax collector. Or new restrictions could leave your capital trapped in the US.
Protect Any Asset Anywhere
An International Trust is open-ended. It’s not limited to any asset type. It can protect almost anything… including cash, stocks, bonds, precious metals, foreign currencies, even real estate and business assets.
And your Trust ensures your freedom to invest anywhere, no matter what investment restrictions the US might adopt.
Currency controls in the US? They can’t touch your International Trust—it’s not in the US.
Limitations on capital leaving the country? Your capital already left, and it’s being safeguarded in the jurisdiction you chose. From there it can be redeployed anywhere in the world.
There are alternative strategies for protecting your assets, but they are far less powerful and far less reliable. An International Trust is the only real solution if you want to…
- End your exposure to lawsuits and arbitrary seizures
- Get family wealth permanently out of the US tax system
- Guarantee complete investment freedom, no matter what new rules the politicians invent.
It’s the robust solution, because no law, no bureaucratic edict, no court order can force you to undo your Trust.
It’s the permanent solution, because your Trust can be perpetual and because it is entirely mobile—it can always migrate to another jurisdiction if you or your heirs ever think it should.
Nothing else comes close. Yet I know from personal experience that the idea of an International Trust leaves many readers perplexed.
They think it’s too complicated… or practical only for the super-rich.
And very few know exactly how it works…
Or how to implement the concept…
Or how to reap the huge benefits, including…
- Protecting you from lawsuits and the arbitrary actions of government agencies.
- Putting you ahead of future exchange controls or gold confiscation.
- Allowing you to reduce the burden of income tax on investment returns.
- Helping you protect family wealth from estate taxes.
- Giving you better investment choices with improved, guaranteed access to international markets.
- Eventually disconnecting from the US tax system.
- Helping you protect future generations by establishing a perpetual reservoir of family wealth.
That’s Why I’m Writing You Today…
… but let me briefly introduce myself.
I’m Nick Giambruno, Senior Editor of InternationalMan.com. For me, internationalization is a passion. It’s also my full-time job.
My readers want the best protection possible from lawsuits, capital controls, and seizures by reckless government agencies—protection no legal battering ram can knock through. The answer is unambiguous: there is no more reliable, shock-proof way to protect what’s important to you than by wrapping it in an International Trust.
