Can you protect yourself from counter law suits by transferring assets to family?


family law
nestor asked:


If you were to file a personal injury suit against someone and they counter sue to scare you out of following through - could you transfer your major assets to a family member or friend so that they can’t get to it?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Law & Ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Can you protect yourself from counter law suits by transferring assets to family?”

  1. sam b Says:

    Not unless you can do it without anyone finding out. If the counter-suit is successful, he can recover from your family member. You’d be better off transferring it overseas. Try the Cayman Islands or something like that.

    Although, keep in mind that just because you have no money available doesn’t make the award go away. The guy can harass you for a long time and make you pay with land or in installments.

  2. caciansf Says:

    Would be the basis of them counter suing ??

  3. Dashes Says:

    yes, but you would have to do it LONG before the suit was filed. at least 6 months in most states. also dont tell anyone you did it to avoid losing your items; it’s illegal. if the court can proove you did it to do just that they can render whateer contract you used to transfer your property null and void.

  4. thomas Says:

    You’d still get a major fine and be in debt.

  5. riteon Says:

    I believe the law in place now is any assets you have …..have to be transfer ed at least 5 years before you get sued. That law was put in place to stop unscrupulous people from doing this. Even if a person says they have no assests other then a home or land….if they loose the winner can put a lean on their property and at the time of their death the lean will be paid through the sale of whatever they have.

  6. C B Says:

    You need to talk to a lawyer. Don’t expect to get good legal advice on here. You get what you pay for.

    Your question does not offer enough detail for any attorney to give you a competent answer. Frankly the number of details that would need to be explored can not practically be done in writing.

  7. laughter_every_day Says:

    You can try but that can somtimes be overcome by proof that it was a fraudulent conveyance. If you transfer a home to a relative and don’t paid for it, you can bet that if someone obtains a judgment against you they will try to set aside that conveyance as fraudulent. Furthermore, a judgment doesn’t jus go away. It can be renewed every several years forever, so that if you ever re-acquire any assets, they can be seized to satisfy the judgment. there are effective ways to hide assets, but simply transfering them to relatives are not among the effective ways.

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