I’m really surprised that no one is mentioning Delaware Multi-Series LLCs. This LLC is a FANTASTIC way to protect your assets.
Delaware law allows you to hold separate assets in separate Series in an LLC. The principal benefit of the multi-series Delaware LLC is that it insulates the liability associated with the assets of any one particular Series from the assets held in other Series. This ability to place multiple assets in a single LLC, yet insulate the liabilities, eliminates the administrative burden and expense of forming multiple LLCs to hold separate business or investment interests; you need only form one LLC, file one federal tax return and pay the $200 Delaware franchise tax) once per year. I think is makes perfect sense!
Two main reasons. The DE series LLC only applies to DE and the liability protection is still un-tested in court. Most people are waiting for case law to get clarity on the issue.
I haven’t looked closely at the Delaware Multi-Series LLC since I taught the GGU graduate tax class on LLCs… but they struck me as sort of a “big hat no cattle” deal.
Each series is, in effect, its own LLC. So you almost automaticallly create a tiered structure of LLCs. But doesn’t Delaware (or maybe it was another state with Multi-Series LLCs) require you to pay an LLC for each “child” in the tree?
When that’s the case, you may get the same effect by using individual building blocks of LLCs? I.e., you could create a “parent” LLC and have it own “child 1” LLC, “child 2” LLC, and so on.
Also, keep in mind that as someone noted (BLL?), outside of Delaware you would need to register your DE LLC as a foreign LLC owning property in, e.g., Texas or California or wherever.