00:37 John Ross: Today's topic... I've got a couple of things that I wanted to talk about and like Lisa and I often say, "We have people that ask questions during the week and it seems like so often things just pop up on kind of in bulk." A lot of people will have the same question in one week. And this week I've gotten several calls, or questions, or client appointments related to asset protection. Now, we do, in our practice, we do a lot of asset protection in the context typically of long-term care. People being able to say, go to a nursing home without worrying about losing their home or their financial assets, their IRAs. Maybe they've got a farm and they wanna protect that. So we do a lot of asset protection related to things like Medicaid benefits or Veterans benefits.

01:36 John Ross: But, that's not the only place that asset-protection can become important. Particularly if you start talking about things like lawsuits out there. We are a litigious society. If you're in a motor vehicle wreck, somebody is hurt on your property, just a lot of times you're gonna see that turn into litigation out there in the real world. And that's unfortunate, but, it is kind of a fact of life. That stuff just happens out there. And so we wanna be able to give y'all some information on how you can protect your assets, what you can do out there in the real world. Now, before I get into that, I thought I might tell a quick little story. This is a story that I read, it's an actual case that was going on in the world. Believe it was up in the New Jersey area. And up in New Jersey there was a Pediatric Neurosurgeon, it was a woman. And so she did brain surgery on little babies.

02:51 John Ross: Now, you can imagine that that is one of those professions that's certainly high-risk for being sued, or legal action, or things like that. So it's very possible that this doctor is going to get sued at some point in time. She understands this and she wants to do some things to protect herself. And one of those things that she does, she goes and visits with an attorney and after some discussion and some various estate planning, they decide that what they're gonna do is create something called a Domestic Asset Protection Trust. Essentially, what this is, a domestic asset protection trust, is a way that you can take your own assets, place them into the name of a trust and then name yourself as the beneficiary of that trust, so that you still have access and use and enjoyment of those assets. But, because of the way the trust's are structured and because of the laws that are governing those trusts, the assets themselves would not be countable or would not be attackable by a creditor or a plaintiff in a lawsuit.

04:06 John Ross: So, the doctor, she meets with the attorney, and the attorney goes over her options and they decide they're going to create this Domestic Asset Protection Trust for her benefit. And so, the attorney says, "Well, I've gotta do the drafting, so I want you to come back in a week." or whatever it was. So, meanwhile, the doctor goes back and continues practicing medicine. Well, she gets up one morning and she's got her lawyer appointment that afternoon, but she has a surgery that morning on a little baby. She's gonna do some brain surgery on this little baby. So, she goes in and she does the surgery and, unfortunately in this case, the child is not doing well following the surgery. The child's stable, but it doesn't look like whatever was wrong with the child is going to have been corrected or maybe something else went wrong, I don't know enough about medicine to be able to tell you what exactly happened.

05:08 John Ross: What I do know though, is that at the time she left the operating room, the child was there, the child was stable. She then goes, she cleans up, she's done work for the day, so she heads over to the lawyer's office to finish up her trust. She goes and finishes up the trust, gets all of the documentation signed, including a statement that says that she's transferring certain assets into this trust, leaves the attorney's office, and is in a car wreck. This car wreck leaves her in a coma, and, at the time, the doctors don't know whether this coma is gonna last four days, could last four weeks, could last four months, could last four years. They just don't have any idea. But she does have a catastrophic brain injury. Her family steps in and with powers of attorney, like we tell everybody to have, very well-structured, well-drafted powers of attorney, that allowed her family members, now that she became incapacitated, to kinda finish up what she had already started, as far as transferring assets into this Asset Protection Trust and things like that. And they do that.

06:21 John Ross: Unfortunately, for the doctor, the coma does, in fact, last about four years. So, she's in a coma for four years. Also, unfortunately, for the little baby that she operated on, due to some of the complications and such during the surgery, the baby was left with some mild disabilities that were gonna last the baby's lifetime. The parents, at some point in time, decided to sue the doctor. There was a lawsuit. Apparently, they either, I believe they won the lawsuit. So, they got a judgment against this doctor. And the next question then became, could they get into this trust that she that she had created? And that was a big question here, because the plaintiffs, they feel like they should be able to get their judgment paid, and they should be able to get that judgment paid with any of the assets that this doctor has. And, of course, the doctor, or the doctor's family, whoever was dealing with this at the time, that part wasn't terribly clear, but, whoever was dealing with this, or dealing with it on behalf of the family, they're saying, "Look, this trust is designed to protect assets and shield them from creditors like you, and therefore, you cannot get to these assets." Now, the reason this case is somewhat interesting, is because of, there's a little part in the law here.

08:05 John Ross: These asset protection vehicles, whether you're talking about trusts or other things, generally speaking, you have to have created the trust before you know of any liabilities that are out there. Any known liabilities that exist out there in the world, those are gonna be able to reach in to a trust. You can't, for example; I can't go out into the middle of the street and find a random person and punch them in the face, and then, go take all of my assets and place them in a trust and when the person I punched in the face sues me, I can't turn around and say, "Well, haha! I've put all of my assets in a trust." The law doesn't allow you to shield your assets from a creditor that was known at the time you tried to shield your assets. There's actually a whole set of laws related to this that are called fraudulent transfer rules. And, these are laws that say, "Hey, look, if you're trying to hide assets from a known creditor, then, whatever you've done to try to hide those assets, we can see through those, the law can see through those transactions and pretend like they don't even exist." And, so, that's kind of where all of this stuff starts. Now, it looks like I've got a caller on the line, so let's see if we can get this caller on the line. Caller, you're on Aging Insight. What can we do for you? 

09:43 Caller-1: Yeah, that surgeon that gave her lawyer about a week to get those documents prepared, that would've been a good week for her to take off and take a little vacation.

09:54 John Ross: Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Probably. Yeah, maybe she should've waited a little bit longer. Yeah, like you said, take a little vacation, maybe not do brain surgery for a week until she got all that stuff set up. Unfortunately, she probably also was thinking, well, she's gotta make money, somehow. But yeah, it probably would have been a good idea. Alright. Well, thanks for calling in. Alright. So what we're gonna talk about today, is we're gonna talk about some of the issues related to asset protection, some of the issues related to how do you protect your assets, when do you do it, how do you do it, what are your different options, what kind of liabilities are out there. So we're gonna talk about a lot of those sort of things today. And as always, if you have any questions or comments about any of this, feel free to give us a shout just like that caller did. So we're going to take a break if I can get a hold of this mouse here. Let's see, maybe it's this one. Alright. We're gonna take a break and we'll be right back.

[pause]

11:16 John Ross: Welcome back to Aging Insight everybody. This is your host, John Ross, here live in the studio. The little intro there says, "You're listening with John and Lisa," but Lisa is not here today, I'm here all by lonesome. But I have all of you out there on the radio and we have everybody out there on the Internet because we are broadcasting this live on Facebook today. Just go to the Ross & Shoalmire Facebook page. While you're there, give us a Like, whatever, and that way, you'll know in the future about these sort of things. But you can go on there and you can watch us live if you really wanted to. I don't know if you're into that sort of thing. But if you are, great. It's a neat thing. And today, we're trying it for the first time.

12:03 John Ross: Now, today's topic, we're talking about asset protection and I was telling the story of a doctor who had created a liability. She was doing surgery and although she didn't know it at the time, the surgery that she had done caused a child to be injured. And that same day, she ended up in a car wreck that created a catastrophic head injury leaving her in a coma for, I believe, about four years which is, obviously, a long time. During that four years, her family put assets into a trust that she had created as per her wishes. So the question that ultimately came out, once the parents of this baby had a judgement against her, the question became, should they be able to get into this trust and get into the trust assets on behalf of this child? And the deal is, is if this doctor had transferred her assets before the surgery, before she'd even done the surgery, no question about it, those assets would have been protected. That's the whole purpose behind these asset protection trusts, is that you can shield your assets by placing them in trust and a plaintiff that comes along later wouldn't be able to detect it. It would also be equally clear that if she knew that she had done something that would have created liability with this child, that if she later, after the liability, if she later tried to create a trust to shield her assets, that those plaintiffs would have still been able to get into those because of these, what are called, fraudulent transfer rules.

14:02 John Ross: But here, we have a situation where, at the time she created the trust and at the time she signed the documents assigning some of her assets into the trust, she didn't actually know that there was a liability out there. The liability was out there, she just didn't know it was out there, which is kind of a pretty interesting little situation. The only way this could have happened was exactly the way it happened, where she created the liability and then became completely incompetent because of her catastrophic brain injury at the same time. That's a very odd situation. Now, ultimately, the courts that were looking at this came back and said, "The deal was is that the liability was in fact before the transfers to the trust, that even though she didn't know about it, even though she wasn't aware about it, they should still be able to reach into that trust." Looks like I've got another caller on the line, so let's see if we can get them on here. Caller, you're on Aging Insight. What can I do for you? 

15:13 Caller-2: Good morning. It's along the lines, it's not a trust question. But I own property, free and clear, that I would like to deed to my children.

15:27 John Ross: Okay.

15:29 Caller-2: What is the best route and what are the tax implications if I just want to just gift it to them? 

15:39 John Ross: Alright. So the question is, you've got some property out there that you wanna just give away to the kids? 

15:45 Caller-2: Yes, sir.

15:46 John Ross: So there are some different things. So first of all, if you wanna give it to them... One thing I tell everybody is, just make sure if you're giving stuff away, make sure it's not something that you're ever gonna need for yourself.

16:01 Caller-2: Correct.

16:01 John Ross: Right.

16:01 Caller-2: Correct.

16:02 John Ross: So, if you've made that decision then there are some cons to this, there's some tax issues related to this.

16:10 Caller-2: Correct, that's my question.

16:12 John Ross: Now, the one thing there's not, is there's... Unless this property is worth more than $5.5 million, there's not gonna be any tax directly on either you or them.

16:23 Caller-2: Oh, Okay.

16:24 John Ross: There's an exemption from gift tax, a lifetime exemption of up to $5.43 million. So there's no gift tax. But if you were to sell this property, you would have to pay tax on the difference between what you paid for it and what you sell it for. Right? 

16:44 Caller-2: Okay.

16:44 John Ross: So if you paid $10,000 for it and it's worth a $100,000 you would have to pay tax on the difference there. And so when you give it to your kids while you're alive, if they ever sell it, same thing. They have to pay tax on the difference between what you paid for it and what they sell it for. But let's say that you held on to that property until you died and they inherited it from you. In that case they get what's called a 'step-up in basis'. They get a new value for death purposes. So if it was worth $100,000 at the time of your death and you died and they inherited it at that $100,000 rate then when they later sell it, they would pay a lot less tax. That's kind of a hidden tax and if you don't expect them to ever sell it, that's maybe not a big deal but if it's likely that they might sell it, you may be better off holding on to it until your death.

17:45 Caller-2: Unlikely that they would sell.

17:47 John Ross: Well, there you go. So, in which case, not really any tax issues and all of that, so you should be good.

17:53 Caller-2: So, I don't have to show I'm selling this for $100, or $10, whatever? 

17:58 John Ross: Nah, nah, you don't have to mess with any of that.

18:01 Caller-2: Good deal.

18:02 John Ross: Alright, appreciate you calling.

18:03 Caller-2: Thank you so much, John.

18:03 John Ross: Sure thing.

18:04 Caller-2: I appreciate it, love y'all's program.

18:06 John Ross: Alright, thank you very much. Alright, and we are coming up on the end of this segment so stick around. We'll be right back! 

[background conversation]

18:08 John Ross: Welcome back to Aging Insight everybody, this is your host, John Ross, here live in the studio. We're on our third segment of the day and of course if you've got any questions out there, you can give us a call, 903-793-1071, you can also, we're doing Facebook Live today. Trying this for the first time, you can go to the Ross & Shoalmire Facebook page, that's Ross, R-O-S-S and Shoalmire, which is S-H-O-A-L-M-I-R-E. Go on Facebook, you can check us out live if you want to and if you have any questions, you can call but you can also ask those questions in the comment section there on Facebook and they should pop up. I did wanna follow-up one thing with the caller right before the break there. He was talking about giving the property to his kids, and again not necessarily a big deal there. From his standpoint, he doesn't need the property, so it's not gonna cause any economic harm to him and it's unlikely that his children will ever sell the property and so he's not too worried about the loss of the step-up in basis that he would have gotten had he held on to that property until death.

19:22 John Ross: So from his standpoint, not too big a deal. One other comment on all of that relates to long-term care. Under the Medicaid rules, if this same person ever needed to go to a nursing home, Medicaid penalizes any transfer of assets that occurs within five years prior to needing something like Medicaid benefits. So, the gentleman that called, as long as he's able to get beyond five years before needing any sort of long-term care then the transfer of the property wouldn't necessarily be an issue. But that's one of those things that you kinda have to determine on an individualized basis. What's your age, what's your health, what's your personal situation? Things like that. But anyway, in his case, not necessarily too big a deal, at least certainly not from a tax consequence.

20:19 John Ross: But we are talking about being able to shield your assets. There are lots of different ways to shield your assets out there. Some of them are things... Some of the assets are already shielded. So for example if you're a Texas listener, certain assets in Texas already have a lot of protections. Homesteads in Texas have a lot of protections. Qualified accounts like IRA's or 401 [k] s have a lot of protections. Certain types of insurance contracts, like life insurance and annuities often have lots of protections already, at least from a lawsuit standpoint. Now, not necessarily from a long-term care standpoint, but certainly from a lawsuit standpoint. So many of our clients, they have a wide range of assets. Maybe they... I have one gentleman who is... He's reached 70-and-a-half. And now that he's 70-and-a-half, he's having to pull up money out of his IRA.

21:36 John Ross: And he's got some pretty big IRA's with his retirement and everything. And so he is taking some pretty large withdrawals for those required minimum distributions. But he doesn't need the money and so that money is pilling up and at the same time he's getting older and so he's starting to worry about maybe being in a car wreck and getting sued, or something like that happening. And he knows that the IRA, yeah, that might be protected but the distributions, once that money comes out of the IRA, it's not protected anymore. The other thing, I have a lot of folks, they have business properties out there. Several rental homes that they use for rental income. Business property may be a vacant lot or maybe a lot, I talked to some folks the other day and they've got some old family land but the family land is currently being rented out by, in one case, a car dealership, and in one case, it's got a couple of buildings on it that a couple of companies rent for storage.

22:28 John Ross: And so you've got folks out there that have these other assets. The first thing when you start talking about asset-protection, you've kinda got two ways you can do it. You have business entities, like LLCs, corporations, limited partnerships, things like that. These are registered business entities and the laws related to these business entities provide a certain amount of protection for the assets, whether it's liability trying to get into the business or whether it's liability in the business that trying to get back out to you personally. But they kinda create a box there, where whatever's in the box, stays in the box and whatever's outside of the box, can't get into the box.

23:14 John Ross: And so you have business entities out there and then you have trusts. Trusts are the same concept in the sense that you have a legal entity out there. You have assets inside this legal entity. And liability from the outside can't get in and that can shield some of those assets. I had a client email me recently and he said, "John, I've got some assets out there, I feel like there might be some liabilities in the future, particularly with automobile wrecks and things like that. I'm trying to figure out how do I protect these? Do I use a company or do I use a trust?" And that's a good question and I got an answer but it looks like I got another caller on the line. So, lets see if we can get this caller on the line. Alright caller, you're on Aging Insight. What can I do for you? 

24:07 Caller-3: Yes sir, I was wondering how to protect a second home like a ranch or something like that other than your homesteaded home.

24:14 John Ross: Yeah, that's a good question. It kinda depends on the deal but here's what I usually, and it's what I was getting ready to say on the radio. And for our Internet folks, I'm gonna repeat your question, which is, "How do you protect like a second home or how do you protect a ranch or a farm or something like that?" So, generally speaking, if it's a business asset, you use a company. Like an LLC, or a limited partnership. If it's a personal asset, then you use a trust.

24:48 Caller-3: Alright.

24:50 John Ross: And so, if we're talking about something that's purely a vacation home, a trust is gonna be a much more powerful asset protection vehicle for something like that. On the other hand, if it's a rental property or maybe it's a vacation home that you rent out ten months out the year, but you just stay there for a couple of weeks during the summer, that may be something that's better suited with a company like an LLC or a corporation. So it kinda depends on the type of asset and how you're using it. So generally, if it's a business asset, use a business. If it's a personal asset, use a trust.

25:30 Caller-3: Well on this ranch, it's more of a family ranch but it's not necessarily income-producing now. The family plans to move to it later. And of course, we are getting it in shape to raise cattle, horses, and fruit trees and different things. But that's the only thing I worry about how to protect that, 'cause it's not really either. It's not a business or a vacation, I guess.

25:57 John Ross: Right. And there's actually one type of company... Something generally referred to as a limited partnership which can be a good tool for personal assets that have this kind of mixed use, like a ranch or something like that. A limited partnership has a general partner who runs everything and it has multiple limited partners. And the limited partners have... They basically have no say so in the company, but their interests are also shielded from any sort of outside attack. So, for example, let's say this was gonna be a family business that you're gonna try and get the kids involved in. You could spread out those limited partnership interests among the kids so everybody's got kind of an equal share in this deal. But if you wanted to retain the control you could be the general partner out there. And because of those limited partnership interests, if one of your kids decides they like getting married so much they just start doing it over and over, you don't have to worry about a divorcing spouse being able to attack it. If one of their teenagers gets into a car wreck and they get sued, they're not gonna be able to get to that child's interest in the farm. So the limited partnerships can be a good tool for things like a family ranch. We've used that several times.

27:22 Caller-3: Great. Great. Well, that's wonderful, thank you so much.

27:24 John Ross: Alright. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for calling in. Alright. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what the best entity choice for asset protection should be out there. And there are lots of options. And so I guess what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take one more break and then when I come back from the break I'm gonna... We'll talk about what some of those options are, 'cause just saying the word 'trust' doesn't quite get you there. There's lots of different types. And saying the word 'company' doesn't get you there. So we're gonna talk about all of those when we come back here in just a second, so stick around.

[pause]

27:45 John Ross: Alright. You're back to Aging Insight here with John Ross and I've got a caller waiting to get on the line. So let me get them on here. Alright you're on Aging Insight. What can I do for you? 

27:58 Caller-4: Hi. I've been listening to your show quite a while and I did a will years ago but after listening to your show I think, like an asset protection trust might be more what I need. And I was wondering, if your mortgage is not paid-off on your home, can it still be put in a trust? 

28:20 John Ross: That is a fantastic question. You're on top of it out there, I'm telling you. [chuckle] We get this question pretty often. If you have a mortgage on a trust... Remember the real estate collapse several years ago? 

28:33 Caller-4: Yes.

28:35 John Ross: Well, when they did that real estate collapse there was a bunch of new laws that came out to protect mortgage holders. And one of the laws that was built into all of that said that as long as, if you're creating a trust, as long as you're still, have a right to occupy that home and you're still in charge of that trust, you're still a trustee, then you can have a mortgage. You can transfer a mortgaged property into a trust without having to worry about it messing up the mortgage.

29:08 Caller-4: Okay.

29:09 John Ross: The trust does have to be structured. It's got to have some very specific language for that, but, it can be done, absolutely.

29:14 Caller-4: Oh, can I ask one more question? 

29:15 John Ross: Sure. Absolutely.

29:18 Caller-4: I know you said a trust cost more than a will because there's a lot more paperwork involved? 

29:23 John Ross: That's right.

29:24 Caller-4: And it saves paperwork on the end for whoever the beneficiaries are? 

29:28 John Ross: Yup.

29:29 Caller-4: Well, does the amount of your assets determine the cost of it? 

29:36 John Ross: Generally speaking, no. It really shouldn't matter how much you're dealing with.

29:42 Caller-4: Or what about how little? [laughter]

29:44 John Ross: Or how little. But that being said, sometimes there are alternative ways besides just a will or a trust, particularly if somebody has a relatively small estate. So that's where getting the advice that's personal to you with somebody can look at your situation, what you got, and figure out what the simplest most cost effective, most protected way you can accomplish it.

30:14 Caller-4: Okay.

30:14 John Ross: It might be a trust, it might not, there might be something else.

30:17 Caller-4: Oh, okay. Okay, well thank you so much for your time.

30:20 John Ross: Yeah. And I appreciate your call and I appreciate your listening.

30:21 Caller-4: Bye.

30:23 John Ross: Alright. So yeah, for my Facebook folks out there who can't hear the callers. She was calling in to ask whether or not a mortgaged property or a mortgaged home could be placed into a trust. And the answer to that question is, yes, the trust does have to have certain language in it. But back in the housing collapse there was some stuff in those laws that said, "That a bank cannot accelerate a mortgage just because the property was transferred into a trust as long as the trust meet certain things." So, kinda going back to all of these, we were talking about the different types of asset protection vehicles and when you're talking about companies, you have all of these jumbles of letters. You have LLCs, and LPs, and LLPs, and PLLCs, and S corporations, and C corporations, and so they can get very complicated. But the LLC is probably the single most popular business entity tool out there to protect a business property. But there've been some changes even within the LLC laws. We have a lot of clients that use, that invest in rental real estate and they may have two, or three, or five, or 15, or 20 different rental properties out there. And having all of those in one entity is actually not a very good idea.

31:55 John Ross: Because, if you've got everything in one bucket and something happens inside that bucket, well, it can get to every other piece of property inside that bucket, so that's actually not a very good deal. There's actually something called a series LLC, which is one LLC with lots of little bitty LLCs inside of it. And this way, if I've got 15 different rental properties, while I have one LLC, but within this one LLC, each little property is its own mini LLC, so we're shielding everything from each other. Those are relatively new vehicles, the loss for those have only been around for a year or two, so they're pretty new, but they're very powerful and very popular now as people start to learn about them. Then you get into the world of trust, not every trust out there is going to protect assets. I've had some people get mistaken on this, where they have a trust in place that they thought would shield their assets, when in fact it does not. The terms of the trust, the laws governing the trust, all of these things are gonna be factors in whether or not that particular type of trust will shield assets.

33:19 John Ross: We use a lot of different types of trusts in our practice, depending on what the property is, what kind of access the person needs, and how much liability that they might expect out there. So, you have something called income-only trusts. So for example, I take a property, put it into trust, and I can't get the property back, but I can get the income from the property if I want. But because I can't get the property back, a plaintiff can't make me get it back, where they can take it. So that can be a relatively simple asset protection vehicle, and we use those quite a bit. There are some states, although Texas nor Arkansas are one of them, there are some states that create a set of laws that have these asset protection trust, where you can transfer your own assets into trust, name yourself as the beneficiary and then turn around and have unlimited access. Typically, these things, you're gonna be looking at states like Nevada, Alaska, and some of the others that have created these very specific laws. Popular day for phone calls, so let's see. I've got another one on the line. Caller, you're on Aging Insight. What can I do for you? 

34:34 Caller-5: Well, at the risk of sounding like an ignoramus, how can you... I've heard you own a trust, if you own a trust, can you sell it? 

34:50 John Ross: That's probably not quite so. The question is, if I have a trust, you say you own it, so could you sell it? 

35:00 Caller-5: Yeah.

35:00 John Ross: And so, not really. So a trust is a legal entity, kind of like a company, but where you can sell a company as a whole, you can't sell a trust like that and the reason is, because it takes... You have three things that create a trust. You have the person that creates it. You have the person who's in charge of it, and then you have the person or people who receive the benefit of it, the beneficiaries. And so, if I create a trust for your benefit, and I name my friend Larry as the trustee, we now have this trust, and I could re-title some of my assets into the name of this trust. They would be there for you, but my buddy Larry would be in charge of them. But that's not something that we could sell as a whole, because it would change the beneficiary, therefore you. Now, we could sell the property out of it. Let's say that I put a property in and the property's just not worth much and so we decide to sell it and put that money in stocks and bonds. We could do that, just so long as you're still the beneficiary of it, but you can't sell it as a whole, because that would... You can't sell the whole trust, because that would change who the beneficiary is.

36:17 Caller-5: Well, okay, so you have a limited ownership or control? 

36:22 John Ross: That's right. Yeah, so you don't really own a trust. The trust owns assets. Those assets are managed by the trustee of the trust, and they're managed for the benefit of the beneficiaries. The only person that really owns the trust is the trustee, in the sense that they own the... They're in charge of the assets. But yeah, it's a whole different little critter out there, so they are a bit... Sometimes it does take a little bit to kinda wrap your head around the concept.

37:00 Caller-5: Thank you.

37:01 John Ross: Yep, no problem. Absolutely. Alright. So, yeah, lots of different stuff out there. So when we're talking about trust, again, kinda like I was talking with the caller who was asking, "Could you sell a trust?" You can't really, because you've got the grantor, the person that creates it, the trustee, who's in charge of it, and the beneficiary. And the beneficiary is always gonna be receiving the benefit of that trust. That's the way that works. Now, again, you've got income only trust, you've got domestic asset protection trust, and there's even a concept of foreign asset protection trust, where you may have heard of people opening accounts in the Cayman Islands or the Cook Islands, or some other foreign jurisdiction. Those can be extraordinarily powerful asset-protection tools, but anytime you're taking US assets or US money and you're putting them under the laws of a foreign government, you're talking about a bunch of regulations and stuff that apply to that. So, often those are only gonna be used by people that one; have a lot of money they need to protect, and two; very high risk of liability. And so, those are pretty special creatures out there. Most often what you're gonna see is, kinda like as I started with this whole thing, you're gonna use business assets for business property, and you're gonna use trust assets for personal property that you wanna protect.

38:41 John Ross: Now, kinda like the one that lady called in, just because a trust is a powerful tool that you can use to protect assets doesn't mean that it's appropriate for everybody and everybody's situation. Anybody that ever tells you that they have the one tool that's absolutely perfect for everybody is lying to you and you should run away screaming from them right then, right that very moment. Trusts can be very good tools for the right person, under the right circumstances. But in many cases they are overkill for a particular situation. Often we'll have somebody come in and maybe their only real asset is their home. Well, you know, something like a... Again, the home is already a protected asset from liabilities, and doing something like a Lady Bird deed on that house would be very simple way of transferring that house at death and a way that would avoid Medicaid. So, there are alternatives to trusts out there that'll still create asset protection. You just got to look at based on what your needs are out there in the world.