Have you talked about the “4 Ds?” Can a creditor take your dog?
Colin Ley is an asset protection attorney and the creator of the PREP Trust®. He is also the co-founder of LayRoots (along with with partner in life & business – Shreya Ley)
Want to protect yourself from stupid lawsuits? Schedule a free, quick call with me at livemorecarefree.com.
Transcript:
In case of divorce
That’s Colin. That’s Shreya. And we are partners in life and business. Colin. Yes? I don’t know if you remember this… But? But when we were first moving in together. I was really nervous about it. I had never lived with a boy that I was dating before that, and Colin was very patient with me, and so we had to buy furniture.
We had to buy some furniture to furnish the place we were living in. And so I was like picking stuff out and Colin looks at me and he’s like, okay. I mean, it’s cool that you’re picking stuff out. I will give you money. Just tell me how much I owe you for like half of everything that you’re buying.
And I looked at him and I was like, no, I’m paying for the furniture because if we break up, I want to take it with me. I like this furniture.
Like the person who after taking a picture with the significant other, takes a picture by themselves, like when you’re on, you know, touring Europe or something, just in case all those photos aren’t ruined. Yeah. But it made me think about operating agreements for businesses and how you’re trying to make these decisions about who gets what in the business or how things go.
If for some reason the partners in the business don’t work out, and I feel like it becomes extra complicated emotionally when you’re partners in life and business. Yeah, it’s true. Are we going to confess that we don’t, we don’t have a, well, we did. Well, no, no, no. We don’t have it in the form of an operating agreement.
We had a prenuptial agreement. We did also have an operating agreement at one point. We have an operating agreement, but it doesn’t say what happens if we get a divorce. No. Well, I don’t know because it’s been lost now. It’s not lost. I have it, but the prenup is lost. Okay. So that’s pretty useless.
But the main point of our prenup is, I recall since I was very underwater on a real estate purchase at the time was that you didn’t want to lose your dog to my creditors. Is that a thing that can happen? Yeah. It’s a thing to put pressure on people to settle a claim or to pay a judgment. They could, in theory, take your dog. Attorneys out there,who have dealt in this situation. Have you ever demanded a dog or confiscated, so to speak? We know any low-down attorneys that would take someone’s dog? Well, maybe one. I can think of one attorney. Unfriended. Right now. Click! But anyway, so yes, we had that…that, but also I was just thinking about like LLC operating agreements and how we generally tell people to like think through a lot of these things when times are good. “Four Ds.”
Yes. Death, divorce, disability, and dastardly deeds. The best ones. Doesn’t that make it five really? Five Ds. Yeah. Dastardly deeds is like one topic, but I thought about how, you know, you write out all these things, but in reality, like we could have written out all, well actually we did write out all sorts of like procedures for how decisions were going to be made if we couldn’t agree.
We have never followed that. Yeah. You’re the boss. Yeah. But that doesn’t. Yeah, but that doesn’t actually happen in practice. I know what it says. Instead, we just debate endlessly until we figure out a solution that we can both live with. Yeah. It’s worked well so far. It’s carried us to this point and it seems like it’ll carry us well into the future.
Yeah. Thanks for being here today, Shreya Ley. Thanks for having me. This is my show. I know it is. I get it.
