South Dakota DAPTS: Protect Your Cake and Eat it, Too

One of the most frequent requests estate planning attorneys receive is how to guard one’s hard-earned savings in the event of litigation, divorce, or bankruptcy. Often, the best plans for protecting personal assets can be simple, such as funding a trust for children or grandchildren. These types of trusts—naming third parties as beneficiaries — are common vehicles for asset protection, because they transfer assets to others. By doing so, however these assets become unavailable for future personal use. For those of us who want to protect assets but also need them available for use in the future, a self-settled Domestic Asset Protection Trust (“DAPT”) could be the answer.