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Ten years ago, our colleagues at Kaiser Partner Financial Advisors Ltd. invited a handful of Swiss firms, including Lighthouse, to join in forming an association that would advocate for Swiss investment advisors who had registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to advise U.S. investors. A decade later, the Swiss Registered Investment Advisor Association has established itself as …
We are pleased to announce that, earlier this year, FinMA approved Lighthouse Swiss Trust AG as a fully-licensed trust company in Switzerland. Lighthouse Trust is now one of only a handful of licensed trust companies in Switzerland. Our Swiss office was first establish in 2008 at a time when trust companies were subject to indirect regulation through so-called self-regulating organizations …
Readers of our articles know that we have long held a dim view about the business climate in Delaware. While the state has promoted itself as a supposedly “safe” domestic asset protection jurisdiction, we saw over a decade ago in Kloiber that the Delaware Chancery Court was unwilling to shield a Delaware asset protection trust from a Kentucky divorce proceeding. …
A 2019 Bankruptcy Court decision confirms the resilience of foreign trusts, particularly those established in Belize, when the trust grantor is made the subject of legal proceedings in the United States. The 2019 case of In re Rensin, 600 B.R. 870 (S.D. Fla. 2019), highlights the importance of appointing an independent trustee in a jurisdiction with strong asset protection trust …
At long last, the U.S. Treasury Department published the highly anticipated proposed regulations under IRC Sections 2703 and 2704. These regulations target the predominant estate tax planning technique of using family limited partnerships ( FLPs) and family limited liability companies (FLLCs), among other types of family-owned enterprises, to achieve transfer tax cost reductions. For example, a senior family member may transfer valuable assets …
On December 18, 2015, the Cayman Islands advanced legislation providing for the formation and registration of limited liability companies. While the legislation has not yet been enacted into law, the text of the bill has been published, and our expert staff has now had a chance to review the proposal. About Our Staff Lawyers on our service team have contributed to …
We frequently encounter the same two questions posed to us by both lawyers and their clients: Which entity is best for asset protection? Which jurisdiction is best for an asset protection entity? Answering these two questions properly requires that we first define several key terms both to identify planning objectives and to define success. Asset Protection: “Asset protection” is a …
Introduction In 1996, the Nevis Island Assembly enacted the Nevis International Exempt Trust Ordinance, Cap. 7.03 (“NIETO”), to bring certainty and clarity to international trust planning. A number of provisions in the NIETO catered to the needs of lawyers and their clients engaged in asset protection planning, including: Preclusion of the Statute of Elizabeth principles governing the determination of a …
“Asset protection” is a term used to describe legal planning that shields a client’s assets from the unanticipated claims of creditors. Asset protection planning employs any number of techniques in isolation or in conjunction to achieve this objective. A competent asset protection plan assumes that, at some point in the future, the client may be in some form of legal …
Over the past several years, Lighthouse Trust has worked with experienced estate planning lawyers in the United States to offer our “OneTrust” solution to U.S.-resident clients. The OneTrust provides a comprehensive set of benefits: An estate planning trust that is excludible for estate tax purposes while providing for the grantor during life A family limited partnership or family limited liability company to serve important …
