I’m not suggesting that in any way. However, as per my example above, many people

You may get a surprise.

You have public liability insurance for rental properties and professional indemnity insurance if you are in a high risk profession Your insurer may not cover you because you breach the fine print of the policy? Or you may have a large excess and be forced to defend an unfair lawsuit.

Not necessarily. It depends upon how your company and trust is structured.

As stated above, look and see who are the directors and shareholders. Not just that but you may run a business and own personal assets in the same trust. If so, your personal assets are at risk.

If you have any doubt, get some independent advice.

You must certainly do. Don’t be deceived.

As stated above, Houghton v Arns shows very clearly that an employee can be liable. In practice employees are not sued very often, but this does not change the fact that they can be sued, and can be liable.

That’s like saying you’ll hold off spending costs on the foundation for a house and build the house on the sand to save some money. In the short term you will save money, in the long term the house won’t stand.

Trying to change things later on is not only costly, but may take years to be effective because of bankruptcy clawback rules which allow the courts to reverse transactions.

As stated in the example above, if a lawsuit is pending, or has already begun, and you transfer an asset into a company or trust, or into your spouse’s name to avoid losing it, the court has the power to reverse the transaction.

And the High Court has shown a willingness to do it in recent times.

You must ensure that you are structured correctly from the beginning. Once a lawsuit is pending it is usually too late. To protect your assets at that time, you would have to incur great expense with no certainty of saving your assets.

You can transfer the house into a trust, but you will be liable for stamp duty, and possibly capital gains tax.

The other option is to use mortgage allocation, eg. assume you are buying another house for $500,000 (House 2). You already own a house worth $400,000 no debt (House 1). You buy House 2 in a trust. You borrow the money and secure it over House 1. So if you are borrowing $400,000 for example, you simply have that on House 1. The effect is you own House 2 in a trust worth $500,000, no debt, and House 1 in your own name, worth $400,000, with $400,000 debt. Suddenly you become less attractive to a potential creditor because House 1 is effectively no longer available, because the bank will get the first bite on the cherry if you get sued and have to sell House 1.

With great difficulty. The Family Court have the power to look straight through trusts. And they take a dim view of people doing “shifty” transactions (as they see it) to prevent their spouses getting their lawful entitlements.

Any asset protection to avoid the family court needs to be undertaken with immense care.

Not really. Buying Australian assets through an Australian trust can cause immense problems. You have legal limitations with respect to buying residential property in Australia through an overseas company or trust. And you may run foul of the Australian Taxation Office.

Again, be very careful if you are looking into anything of this kind. Make sure that you book in with a specialist asset protection or overseas tax expert in Australia.