By: Staff at Panama Private Access
E-Mail: contact@aupanama.com
Asset protection is a system for protecting all of the assets owned by an individual or family. Protection against civil lawsuits is a big reason why people use asset protection. In the United States, so many civil lawsuits are filed every day that a multi-billion dollar industry exists for their support services. Millions of dollars judgments against companies and individuals are awarded on a regular basis for the craziest injuries. The famous hot coffee spilled on the lap of a McDonald’s drive in customer resulting in a $2.9 Million judgment is one example. Companies are sued every day because an employee on company business or using the company vehicle gets into accidents.
Fear of being sued has created another $ Billion industry called asset protection. Legal structures providing asset protection are advertised around the world especially in so-called “tax haven” countries. A tax haven is where no income taxes either exist or are levied only upon its corporations and companies doing business inside the country while profits earned outside the country are tax free like Panama does.
Many foreigners create Panama offshore corporations to protect their assets. When Panama corporations own the home, other real estate, vehicles, jewelry, antiques, artwork, and securities literally leaves a family without owning anything. These are known as “judgment proof” defendants in a civil lawsuit, which are every plaintiff’s lawyer’s nightmare. Lawyers won’t be paid if the million dollar civil judgment cannot be used to seize properties that the defendant doesn’t own. That’s because almost every plaintiff’s lawyer works on a “contingency” fee getting a percentage of the money collected by seizing the defendant’s properties and selling them. No collection means no fee.
Panama has excellent anonymous corporate ownership laws for complete privacy and great bank secrecy laws to protect the corporation’s bank accounts. Other countries can’t come to Panama to enforce their civil judgments against the real owners of these corporations. This is asset protection at its best.
Another benefit of using Panama corporations for global asset protection is Panama’s unique Private Interest Foundation law allowing all of the corporate shares of the Panama corporations to be held by a private foundation created by the foreigner. The private foundation offers worldwide estate planning by passing control of the assets to the creator’s heirs for many generations.
A Panama law firm can set up an asset protection structure within a few days at a low cost.