I am a young 22 year old male just graduated from college, landed my first full time job and I am looking to get into real estate. I am also planning on getting married within a year or two. However my parents are getting divorced after 20+ years of marriage which got me thinking.
How can you protect your real estate and other investments from the unfortunate event of divorce? If I was to purchase all my property through say an LLC would that protect me? If I put the property in a Trust would that protect me?
What are others thoughts?
It depends on what state you are in. But in general if you get married she gets some of your business if you divorce. A prenuptial protects what you have at the time of the marriage but in general whatever you gain after the marriage is shared in one way or another. When you get married she and you are one. You can’t protect yourself from yourself.
The key to a successful marriage is the selection process. If you select the correct woman you won’t have to divorce her later.
What Bluemoon said…nothing to add to that!
If you own property before you get married, you can maybe get her to sign a prenuptial agreement that says she has no claim to that property.
However, there isn’t much you can do about property acquired after the marriage, because, news flash, after you are married and form a life partnership, half of what you earn is hers. If you buy property after the marriage, the money you purchase it with is half hers.
Seriously, if you don’t want to share, don’t get married.
It’s very unfair to the unfortunate woman if your attitude is that everything that is yours is yours, everything that is community is yours, and everything that is hers is yours, and you intend to take it all with you when you leave the marriage. With that attitude, you are just about guaranteeing yourself that you will end up with a divorce.
When you end up in divorce court, she is going to take some of that stuff that you consider to be all yours.
Find one hell of an accountant and lawyer that knows how to hide things. May not be ethical in all ways but you never know. Bahama’s and other islands are a great place. Yes there are ways. But you really need to acquire your properties with cash using a series of offshore holding companies and her not knowing about them.
In general, the richer partner protects assets with a prenup.
Now I remember why I am in my mid 30’s and still single. Oh yeah I get to keep my assets.
Sorry to hear about your parents marriage. This can be very dissapointing and discouraging at any age. Hope this does not make you fearful and affect your committment to your success. If you have a successful mental attitude you can survive anything. Look at Donald Trump as an example, he lost almost everything at one point but was able to rebuild a bigger empire. Fear and success do not coexist.
Unless you were born into wealth, what do you have to protect at your age? If you got married this year and divorced next year, do you even have any significant assets to worry about all this?