Healthcare Professional Asset Protection

Hart David Carson assists healthcare professionals in developing solid asset protection plans. Any healthcare profession will carry a certain amount of risk. Malpractice lawsuits have become common, and in many cases, they can result in heavy losses to physicians in the form of seized assets, increased malpractice insurance premiums, and a damaged reputation.

These are not just limited to incompetent healthcare professionals either. Whether or not you do anything wrong, you can easily find yourself facing a lawsuit. In many cases, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a malpractice claim—lawsuits may come from upset employees, landlords, contractors, and other entities who see healthcare professionals as good targets.

Risks Healthcare Professionals Face

Malpractice lawsuits aren’t the only risk healthcare professionals will face. Prevalent lawsuits may cause insurance premiums to increase drastically, you may incur losses on some investments, the IRS may sweep in and take massive chunks from your wealth in the form of taxes, and so forth. Your asset protection plan needs to take all these risks into account in order to function well.

Considering the risks involved in practicing healthcare, it is absolutely vital for doctors to have a solid asset protection plan in place. This should be structured promptly, well in advance of any litigation or lawsuits against you. Otherwise, it can be interpreted as fraudulent activity, which can make facing a lawsuit even more damaging.

Also, it must be structured correctly to coincide with your estate planning, your practice’s corporate structure, and your investment portfolio. Hart David Carson can assist you in developing a comprehensive asset protection plan that will mitigate the risks posed to you through your profession.

Elements of Asset Protection

For doctors, dentists, and other healthcare professionals, asset protection should incorporate a variety of elements, including:

• Insurance, including malpractice insurance, umbrella insurance, and other plans to fill in the holes present in normal coverage
• Trusts to protect assets from seizure and taxation while still yielding benefits to you
• Estate planning, which will help protect your assets from heavy estate taxes and other risks
• Retirement planning, with plans for both you and employees within your practice
• Well-structured governance practices and policies to keep employees happy and avoid malpractice
• International asset protection, which will make some assets inaccessible to creditors

As you can see from this list, asset protection isn’t just insurance, though that is a significant aspect of it. It needs to incorporate a variety of other vehicles in order to be truly effective. However, this leads to a great deal of complexity, since each aspect of this type of planning has its own federal and state regulations to deal with. In addition, ensuring that each of these component parts of your plan will mesh with the others only increases the complexity of the process.

Legal Assistance in Asset Protection Planning

Healthcare professionals must seek the advice and assistance of an experienced attorney when developing an asset protection plan. Hart David Carson provides that experience for physicians throughout the Chicago-Metro area. Our attorneys can assist you in structuring each aspect of your asset protection, including estate planning, trust structuring, corporate governance structuring, and dispute resolution. 

To get started securing your assets against lawsuits and other risks, contact Hart David Carson today for a free consultation.