Putting The Privacy Settings On Your Life And Assets
I will give you the advice I give to my clients: treat your life, your assets, your privacy like you would treat your Facebook profile. And by that, I mean, don’t put it out there if you don’t want people knowing about it.
Why would people not want their public records of cars or real estate they own to be easily accessible? It’s not just the rich and famous asking us to help make their assets and investments anonymous. It is also your next door neighbor, your banker, or maybe your boss that are taking the time to protect what they own. We are seeing more and more people are wanting to control who has access to their personal information and holdings.
Over the past few months, people have been getting very involved in knowing just how much information about their life is being seen online. Due to the latest highly publicized Facebook issues, more people are finally checking their privacy settings on Facebook and learning what the public can see when searching for them. People are becoming more aware of how their personal information is actually being shared. What the general public is beginning to realize more than their latest vacation photos are being shared online; careers, assets, and other vulnerabilities that could be exploited are easily available to even the most amateur con artist. When you have assets, you are a target for predatory behavior.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE HIRE US IF THEY ARE NOT FAMOUS?
There are many reasons people want to make their assets and investments private. Some examples may include:
· People with multiple assets that don’t want liabilities to cross from one to another
· People with diversified holdings
· Businesses that have inherent liability issues
· Celebrities of all forms
· Persons that are fearful of stalkers, abusive persons, criminals, threats, etc…
· Small business owners that want to protect their company from being targets of frivolous lawsuits.
· Families that want to preserve future investments for their children
· People with children. For a hundred reasons.
· People with relatives who are …how do I say this gently?…a**holes.
· Future Spouse or significant other
· Ex Spouse Ex significant other
· People who don’t trust their current spouse
· High risk proffesionals
· People with famously wealthy relatives.
· People who simply want to stay private.
Here is no one way to just put everything under one umbrella of protection. Each client’s specific needs and concerns determine how and where certain things are done. For example, if I have a client who is a CEO at a big company and she drives a Bugatti, she knows she is an easy target for anyone on the road. If she gets into even a little fender bender, the person in the other car could go after her for everything she owns. (This happens much more often than I would like to believe.) In order to protect her car, we would approach things from a level of separating assets so that they can’t be crossed from a liability standpoint. We can protect the assets individually from there. On the other hand, if a person has a very average income, but inherited a collectors car from their grandfather, they will absolutely want to make sure that asset is protected in case they would get into financial trouble in the future. They would want to make sure the bank could never go after that family inheritance.
We help clients see their vulnerabilities so that they can take all the right precautions to make sure their lives are as protected as possible. We all know someone who lost everything they own after a bad business deal or due to an unexpected law suit. Now, I cannot guarantee you won’t ever have a bad business deal, but I can help you avoid losing everything.
Questions? Need help increasing your life’s privacy settings?
Call Kay and Associates today 424-284-8262
