What about assets outside the US?

While setting up US-based estate plan, someone asked what to do with the small assets they had back in their home country

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:

• Hey, Colin and Shreya Ley,
• I’m Shreya.
• Of LayRoots and we wanna talk about what to do when you have non-U.S. assets.
• Yeah, because we actually get this question quite often.
• But before we get into it, if you have any questions about this, about getting your estate plan done, go to LiveMoreCarefree.com, you can book a free 30 minute chat with her or me.
• Yeah.
• Livemorecarefree.com.
• It’s kinda like lawyer roulette, you don’t know which one of us you’re gonna get.
• But you don’t die if you get the wrong one.
• Yeah, but you don’t in regular roulette, either.
• Russian roulette?
• Okay, Russian roulette is the only roulette in which you die.
• Oh, you didn’t say Russian roulette?
• No, I said lawyer roulette.
• Sorry I’ve been watching “Deer Hunter” this past weekend and it’s a Gen X thing, any-hoo. Big caveat, here, we’re talking about a very non-complicated international asset portfolio.
• Yes.
• Right, so we had a client in, they’re setting up their trust, they live here in the U.S., they’re from the United Kingdom and they have a few assets over there in country. And they say, “Hey, what about those things?”
• Yeah.
• And for that what we typically suggest is to have a local estate plan–
• Something very simple.
• In that country that basically directs what to do with those assets in the other country. Because there’s a couple things you wanna make sure of. One, that the plan for that foreign asset doesn’t conflict with the U.S. based plan.
• Right.
• Right, you want it to be specific to that country, to those assets. And there was a number two but I forgot what it was. It can be very complicated and have a lot of tax implications in other countries, so things can get complicated, but the easiest thing for just a basic who-dad thing is just that local plan. So for them, we suggested going on, there’s actually a website that’s like, Expat Wills that makes a really simple local estate plan in the U.K. that says, “Hey, these assets, put them in this trust we made in the U.S.”
• Yeah, so we can point to their more comprehensive estate plan that they’ve created.
• Yeah, the main one where they wanna
• Yeah.
• funnel everything through.
• Mm-hmm.
• It’s kind of like that pour over will where it’s like, “Hey, if there are things outside my trust, put them into the trust.”
• Colin, they don’t know what a pour over will is.
• Ah, I got too fancy there, huh?
• Yeah, but that’s something that we do for people who make trusts with us.
• Yeah, maybe that will be another video.
• Yeah.
• Pour over wills.
• That’s not the type of pouring that we’re talking about.
• Liquid.
• Mm-hmm.
• Pour it in, kinda like we’re pouring on this color coordination, they can’t see your pants.
• They can’t, wait, ah!
• There it is, look at that.
• Almost, yeah, there it is! Look at that!
• This can be the thumbnail for the video. ♪ Dee ♪ In sum, if you’ve got assets in other countries you wanna be sure that you have a coordinated plan. You don’t want to set up two different plans that conflict with each other.
• Nope.
• You want them to go in harmony.
• No, no!