Wealth Preservation & Asset Protection

You’ve spent decades building wealth. The question isn’t whether you need to protect it — it’s whether your current plan actually does.

Florida offers some of the strongest asset protection laws in the country, but those protections don’t activate automatically. They require deliberate planning, the right legal structures, and timing. Waiting until a creditor appears or a lawsuit is filed is too late.

At Ginsberg Shulman, we work with business owners, professionals, real estate investors, and high-net-worth families to build asset protection structures that are legally sound, tax-efficient, and designed to hold up under pressure.

What Asset Protection Planning Actually Involves

Asset protection is not about hiding assets or defrauding creditors. It is about legally restructuring ownership so that your wealth is insulated from future claims — before those claims arise.

Effective planning typically involves some combination of the following:

Florida’s Unlimited Homestead Exemption

Florida protects your primary residence from most creditor claims without a dollar cap. For high-net-worth clients, this is one of the most powerful tools available anywhere in the country. If you hold significant equity in your home, that equity may already be protected — but only if your homestead is properly established and maintained under Florida law.

Florida Limited Liability Companies (LLCs)

A properly structured Florida LLC creates a barrier between your personal assets and business liabilities. For real estate investors, holding each property in a separate LLC limits exposure so that a claim arising from one property cannot reach the others — or your personal wealth. Florida’s charging order protection adds another layer: a creditor who wins a judgment against you personally generally cannot seize your LLC interest, only receive distributions if and when they are made.

Family Limited Partnerships (FLPs) and Family Limited Liability Companies (FLLCs)

FLPs and FLLCs allow you to consolidate family assets under centralized management while transferring interests to family members at a discount for gift and estate tax purposes. The discount arises from lack of marketability and lack of control — meaning you can transfer more wealth using less of your lifetime exemption. When properly structured, these entities also provide creditor protection for the underlying assets.

Irrevocable Trusts

Assets held in a properly drafted irrevocable trust are generally not reachable by your personal creditors because you no longer own them. Depending on your goals, an irrevocable trust can serve multiple functions simultaneously: removing assets from your taxable estate, providing for a surviving spouse or children, protecting assets from a beneficiary’s creditors, and preserving eligibility for certain benefits. The tradeoff is loss of direct control, which is why these structures require careful planning around your broader estate plan.

Tenancy by the Entireties

In Florida, married couples who hold assets as tenants by the entireties — including real property and, in many cases, bank accounts and brokerage accounts — receive protection from the individual creditors of either spouse. A creditor of the husband alone, for example, generally cannot reach an asset held jointly as tenants by the entireties. This protection is automatic for real estate titled correctly, but requires affirmative steps for other asset types.

Timing Is Everything

The single most common mistake in asset protection planning is starting too late. Florida’s fraudulent transfer laws — and federal bankruptcy law — allow creditors to unwind transfers made with intent to hinder, delay, or defraud, and in some cases to unwind transfers made while you were insolvent, regardless of intent.

Effective asset protection requires a clean timeline: structures put in place years before any dispute arises, funded properly, and maintained consistently. A plan assembled after you receive a demand letter provides little protection and significant legal risk.

What We Do Not Do

We do not recommend offshore accounts, nominee ownership arrangements, or any structure designed to conceal assets from courts or creditors. Beyond the ethical problems, these approaches carry serious legal risk — including criminal exposure — and courts are experienced at unwinding them.

Every structure we recommend is fully transparent, properly documented, and defensible.

Who This Planning Is For

Wealth preservation planning makes the most sense if you are:

• A business owner with personal liability exposure
• A physician, attorney, or other professional subject to malpractice claims
• A real estate investor with multiple properties or significant equity
• A high-net-worth individual or family with a taxable estate
• Someone going through a significant liquidity event (sale of a business, inheritance, real estate proceeds)

If your net worth is primarily in retirement accounts and a homestead, you may already have substantial protection under Florida law without additional planning. We will tell you that directly rather than recommend structures you don’t need.

Board Certified. Fort Lauderdale.

David Shulman is Board Certified by the Florida Bar in Wills, Trusts and Estates, and holds an LL.M. in Estate Planning. Jill Ginsberg is Board Certified in both Elder Law and Estate Planning. Fewer than 1% of Florida attorneys hold even one board certification.

Asset protection planning intersects with estate planning, elder law, and tax planning. Having both certifications in-house means your protection strategy is integrated with your broader plan — not bolted on separately by a generalist.