By Lee R. Phillips

Michael Douglas revealed Tuesday that he had stage 4 throat cancer.  Stage 4 means that the cancer has spread far beyond the original tumor and is usually very difficult to cure. Douglas said he has at least an 80 percent chance of recovery. “And with certain hospitals and everything, it does improve.”

News sources quoted his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, as being upset because they had been to several doctors over the last year about his sore throat, and the cancer was not found sooner.  It is difficult to be understanding when a professional lets you down, and you are hurt by their negligence.

As my over 100,000 students know, I have also had a serious bout with cancer.  Mine put me in the hospital in an isolation room for over 5 months straight, and I was out of work for three years.  It changed the course of my life.  I wasn’t supposed to be a tax asset protection type lawyer.  I was supposed to be a patent attorney.

While I was sick the legal system took us to the cleaners, and I was an attorney.  My wife became infuriated.  She said, “I will never trust them again.”  (She over reacted.  She became an attorney also.)  You don’t have to be an attorney, but you can’t afford to walk in off the street and blindly trust your doctor, CPA, attorney, or anyone else.

We learned that lesson – that you don’t blindly trust anyone – the hard way in the streets of hard knocks.  By the way, if you are learning your lessons in the streets of hard knocks, you are paying too much for your education.  The price I paid to learn the lesson that you don’t blindly trust anyone was a big change in my life.

You see, I knew I had cancer.  I knew I had cancer a year and a half before the cancer was actually discovered for me.  I had been to the family doctor and said, “Hey man look, there’s a lump.”  The family doctor had looked at it and said it was cancer.  He sent me to the specialist.

The specialists had hardly even looked at me.  He said, “Phillips, you’re an idiot and so is your family doctor.  If he was sure you had cancer he would have sent you to the hospital.  He wouldn’t have sent you to me for a second opinion.  You just have an infection.”

The specialist treated me for a year and a half as having has an infection.  By the time the cancer was discovered by a cardiologist, because I had heart failure, it was final stage four cancer and involved all the organs in my body.

What I didn’t know was all the specialist had to do was poke my finger and give me a blood test.  He would have found the cancer.  But, I just blindly trusted him.  You can’t blindly trust anyone.

One of the reasons I’ve created my legal home study courses is so you will have the information you need to have so you don’t have to blindly trust your lawyers and CPAs.  You can use the courses to do your own legal work better than most attorneys can do it for you, or you can use the courses as your education, so you can direct what you want your professionals to do for you.

You don’t have to do your own legal work (you can, if you want), but you do have to have the information to know what has to be done.  You can’t just blindly trust.

Start with the new addition of my book, Protecting Your Financial Future, and listen to my DVD, Using the Law to Make Money and Protect Assets.  Get the book at the discounted price and I’ll include the $20 DVD for free.  This is a limited time offer so do it now, and take control of your financial future.

It’s never too early to think about asset protection.  Many people think that asset protection is only for when you’re older and have made a lot of money.   The turn in the economy the last couple of years has demonstrated more than ever that asset protection should not wait until your have gray hair or a million dollars.

There are simple actions you can and should take to protect your assets before you take business risks.  The trouble is that most people do not think that the business endeavor they are investing in is putting them at risk.  For example two years ago many of my clients were involved in real estate investing without giving a thought to risk.  They invested in their own names and put all of their personal assets at risk.  Real Estate seemed like a sure thing at the time.  Others of my clients have been so busy running their operations that they didn’t take time to think about asset protection. Now they’re in trouble.

An asset protection plan is just that, a complete plan for your assets.  It is not a difficult process but really a series of simple steps that you take to protect yourself.  It involves legal documents, insurance, and personal diligence to keep up the asset protection shield.

The Florida Supreme Court recently “set aside” a single member LLC and let the personal creditors of the LLC owner come directly against the LLC assets.  The creditor in the Olmstead case last month was simply given the assets of the LLC to satisfy the LLC owner’s debt.  (Actually, it was the government coming after Olmstead who was a bad dude.  So, the good guy won. Can the government be the good guy?)  Nonetheless, this means Florida has come out against the charging order protection that the Revised Uniform LLC Act says single member LLCs should enjoy.

The LLC is unique, because it gives you the “corporate shield” that protects the owners (members) from liabilities of the company, just like the corporate shield in a corporation protects the shareholders from the liabilities of the company.  Additionally, the LLC has an element of a partnership, because it protects the company from the personal debts and liabilities of an individual member by making the creditors of the individual get a “charging order” against the company.

If an individual owner of a corporation gets sued, goes bankrupt, gets divorced, or suffers any one of a dozen other “tragedies” in his or her life, the creditor (guy who won the suit, bankruptcy trustee, ex spouse, etc.) simply gets the stock the individual owned in the corporation.  If an individual owner of some IBM stock loses his or her stock, it is no big deal for IBM.  However, if an individual owner is the only owner of a small corporation and they lose their stock, then they lose the company.  The new owner of the stock simply votes out the acting officers and directors and takes over “ownership” of all of the corporate assets. (more…)