- Hey, guys, Toby Mathis here, and today, we're going to be going over how to make yourself appear invisible. And I don't mean like you're going to become the invisible man or the invisible woman. What I'm talking about is can I make it appear that I don't own all the things that I own?
And so we're going to have to do two steps. First off, you have to understand what assets pop up when somebody does an asset search and vice versa. What assets are never included on those reports, 'cause that'll let you understand when somebody is looking at you, what they can actually see.
So if I'm looking at your financial condition, I want to know what things are in your name and I want to see how much money you might have, what businesses you might own, what things, like RVs, cars, boats, and all those things, anything that's titled with a third party, I don't want to be able to see that. And just me saying that, titled with a third party, you should understand that the world kind of gets small. So some of the things that we might be able to see, like for example, if I was looking at you as a potential defendant.
So I have somebody in my office and they're saying, hey, this person owes me money, and I'm going to look to see whether recovery is possible, and I'll explain how the math works in a second, why that's really important. But we want to see whether you have assets. I'm going to have a list here of assets that I can typically see.
So let's kind of go through them, for example, your house. I'll be able to see that if your name's in a public record on a house. Cars, boats, even RVs.
I should be able to see, right? I should be able to see that if it's in a database, if it's titled somewhere. How about my businesses?
And I'll put businesses, right? In case you have multiple businesses, do you have LLCs? Are you listed as a director or an officer of a company?
All those things, I want to be able to see. How about financial accounts? Maybe we're looking, can I see bank accounts, IRA, 401k, all that?
Can I see all those? Guess what? Probably not, right?
That's not going to pop up on a asset search. I might be able to see rental properties you own. I'm just looking for anything that might pop up in your name that I could see that is something where I can start to determine whether or not you are a candidate to be a good defendant.
In other words, a good defendant is a defendant that can pay if I'm coming after you. That's a good defendant. A bad defendant is somebody who cannot pay.
In other words, I could get a multi-million dollar judgment against you, and I'll never collect a dollar, right? If you're a plaintiff lawyer, you don't want that. If you are somebody who's trying to shake somebody down, you definitely don't want that, right?
You don't want to be suing the homeless, right? You want to sue the rich guy. You want to sue somebody who has deep pockets.
That's always the term you hear. Who has deep pockets? And it might be that there's a group of people, you just don't want to be sticking out as the one that they really want to go over, and I'll give you guys a story that illustrates that exact point.
Last thing is I might look at returns, tax returns. Like this would be helpful if I could see it. I will show you how to make all of these things invisible so that if anybody ever looks at you, you're not a good candidate as a defendant.
In order to understand the math, I'm going to put up the kind of an equation, and I'm going to use something that a lot of lawyers use, which is the settlement value. In other words, I want to know what the settlement value of your case is because 99% of cases don't actually go to trial. The vast majority are going to be settled.
The vast majority, 99, probably more than 99% now, 'cause of COVID. Most of these things are going to be settled. So you want to know what kind of the settlement value is.
So the settlement value is always going to be kind of a factor of what the value of the claim is. So claim top dollar, whatever that dollar amount is, and you're going to multiply it by your percentage chance of winning. So when I say my chance of winning, I'm saying like, if I pursue this and I go all the way to trial, what is my chance of proving my claim by preponderance of the evidence, or if it's fraud, it might be clear cogent and convincing?
Like there's different standards of proof depending on what the claim is. I want to know what is that chance of winning. A lot of people think that's all you do.
It is not. Then we have to look at costs. We're going to subtract off costs.
And costs can be dollar costs, like, hey, depositions costs money, hiring experts costs money. It's not something your lawyer's going to sit there and say, hey, I'll just pay for it. You're going to have to pay for those things.
They might be charging you a contingent fee. So maybe you're going to save on some of the attorney's fees but you're still going to have costs. You also have emotional costs and you have lost time.
Believe it or not that if you get into litigation, you're going to find a lot of your time being sucked up in to it. And the other thing is you get to have that, what we call the three AMs. The three AMs are when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're staring at the ceiling and you're thinking about your case.
Whether you're plaintiff or defendant, you're going to have that. So there has to be a cost that you're factoring in. And so you're saying, hey, here's my claim.
So let's say that my claim is, I'll use an example. Let's have $100,000 claim, top dollar, hey, that's what the attorney in their judgment, they look at verdicts and they look at settlements and they say, hey, your claim in this town is worth about 100,000 bucks, and you have a really good chance of winning. Let's say you have a 70% chance.
That's a $70,000 claim minus the costs. Let's say that the costs are 20,000. So we now have a fee $50,000 settlement value, but then we have to multiply it probably by the most important factor.
And that is you multiply it by the percentage chance of recovery. What is my chance to actually get the money even if I win? What is my chance of recovery?
Do I have insurance? Do I have something where it's 100%? So now I'm just dealing with the settlement value, like, hey, what is it really worth?
They're going to say, hey, 100,000. We think that your top claim is really 70,000. And we know, hey, we know that you have a good case.
So we think it's closer to 50 minus your cost is 30. You come back at them and say, no, we think it's 50. You're probably going to settle somewhere in that range.
Like now it's just a matter of where are we going to be in that range, and because we have 100% chance of recovery if we have the insurance. What if we don't have the insurance? What if we don't know what the other party has?
What does this chance of recovery go to? If it goes to zero, this person has no assets in their name. We don't think we're ever going to be able recover.
It goes to zero. Guess what the value of this, the settlement value of that case is. It goes down to zero, right?
Why would anybody settle? You might be able to say, well, I'm going to harass them. So there's the nuisance value of the case.
Hey, I'll just to never have to deal with it. Is it worth it for someone to pay you something just for the nuisance value? That's when you hear somebody say, hey, frivolous suit, nuisance value, hey, throw 10,000 at 'em.
That's what they're talking about, 'cause there's really no value in it. What we want to do is avoid being the party that gets the lawsuits. Like nuisance value cases, they're seldom.
Much more often, it's a shakedown, and they're looking for a deep pocket and you invite that by having all of these assets in your name. So if I put a big list and I see big dollars in house, I see lots, lots of cars and boats, I see lots of businesses, that's all dollar signs to me. If I see 20 rental properties, I see dollar signs, right?
So you have to understand, how do I make it so I'm not an attractive target? And let me give you an illustration by way of a story. I'm going to change the facts up, 'cause you could actually look up this case.
So I'm not going to tell state it's in and I'm not going to tell you the industry, but I'll say it was a business and there was a catastrophic injury in the business. Won't say who's at fault. But there was multiple parties that could be held liable.
There was an issue with insurance too as to whether it was even covered. There was partial coverage but not full coverage on all the liability, and we're talking about a very valuable claim. So there was multiple parties.
Two of the parties were relatives. Let's just say it's two brothers. Brother one was our client, and one of the things that we do with our clients is make sure that they're invisible from a public record.
So if you run the search, I want to make sure that you don't see much. And I'll explain how each one of these things works, but I want to make it to where you just don't see much, like if somebody's trying to see what you have, there's not much in the public record. They're not really going to be able to do that.
Now I know what you're thinking. Hey, if I get sued, they're going to ask for my bank accounts, they're going to ask for my tax returns, they're going to do all these things, right? They're going to see it anyway.
Not in the original lawsuit. If I get into a car accident, the issue is, was I negligent when I was driving? Did I cause harm?
It has nothing to do with my financial situation. They get a judgment, then they go to supplemental proceedings, and they can start asking for those things. So that's generally year and a half, two years, nowadays, three and four years because of COVID to go through that process.
It's a long time before they get to start doing discovery as to your financial condition. What we're trying to do is create that uncertainty so that the percentage of recovery becomes a big question mark or gets close to zero. So the settlement value of your case stays as close as possible to up here.
Like what we want to do is kind of keep you in that area where somebody is saying, you actually damaged me, but I don't know if I'm going to recover. So I'm going to be on the lower end of that spectrum. I'm going to settle for a reasonable amount.
What you don't want is the person to go pin their ears back and say, I'm going to go after everything you have, I'm going to scare the snot out of you, and I'm going to roll the dice with the jury and try to get some obscene amount. We're going to ask for something ridiculous, and they're just shaking you down 'cause you have money and you're like, you wouldn't do this to a normal person. You're only doing this to me because you think that I have the money and you're just going to shake me down 'cause you think I'm rich and it's going to suck up my time, which happens all the time.
Why am I suing you? 'Cause you have the money. So let's go back to our situation.
We had a catastrophic injury, brother one. We had pretty much invisible. This was in a state where the state laws protected certain assets like the IRAs and 401ks actually were protected, and the homestead on the house was really low.
So they could potentially take a house. So we had put protections in place by taking their name off of it. So if somebody couldn't just pull up and see everything this person had.
So brother one did not look like they had much of anything. Guess what happened to that first brother? They settled for the insurance.
That's what we want. They had 100% chance of recovery on the insurance, not much percentage chance of recovery on anything above. So they said, "Hey, let's just take what bro in the hand.
"Let's do that. " The other brother who was not our client who actually owned less assets than our client ended up in protracted litigation. They were going after everything because they could see lots of rental properties and lots of businesses.
So they put him through over three years of litigation, trying to get more than just the insurance. There was other parties too that were sued. All of them settled out fairly quickly 'cause they didn't have anything.
The two brothers, it was just interesting. Both high net worth individuals. One had invisibility, we call it security through obscurity.
We made sure that their assets were obscure. I can't pin down what you got unless you tell me. And because of that, the settlement value went way down.
They were able to get out. The brother that did not have obscurity where everything was visible, the chance of recovery went back up and they were willing to roll the dice on the claim, 'cause there's something called joint and several liability. All I got to do is nail one of you guys and I can get the whole judgment.
So that looking at it going, oh my God, what should I do? I'm going to settle out with these guys, but I'm going to keep Mr Moneybags on the hook. You don't want to be perceived as Mr Moneybags or Mr.
Moneybags. You want to be perceived as the obscure. I don't know what they have.
You want to be a big question mark and here's how we do it. Number one, can they see your house in a public record? The answer is yes.
If your name is on that house, I can pull a national search and see whether you have anything in your name. I could use a service, I could probably just do it off the internet, but for definite, for sure, a private investigator is going to pull that stuff up and they're going to see everything that you have, and they're going to see all of your land titled in any county in the United States. They'll be able to see it.
So yes, they'll be able to see your house. How do I get my name off of a house? People say, oh, you can't do it.
Here's how you do it. You take that house and you transfer it into something called a land trust. And a land trust, you're separating out the title, the name that it's held in from the beneficial use and enjoyment.
It's all you're doing. Land trust have been around for years and years and years. They came out when the Sears Tower was built, that's a great example.
Also Disney World used land trust. There's some states have statutes. Like I just mentioned Illinois and Florida, both of those have statutes, but every state recognizes a grantor trust, which if it owns real estate only, we call it a land trust.
Every state recognizes land trust. If some lawyer or somebody says, oh, my state doesn't have land trust, they may not have a statute. It's in the teens how many states have statute.
I think it's like 14 or 15 but it doesn't matter 'cause all states recognize grantor trust. A grantor trust example, personal property trust or a living trust, you guys all heard of inter-vivos trust or living trust. Every state recognized it.
That's just a grantor trust. They're the same exact type of trust, it's just we're setting it up to hold title. So the name on the title is different than who gets to enjoy the beneficial use.
Somebody might say, well, in some states like Arizona, you have to list who's the beneficiary. Who's right is it to force the listing of the beneficiary? Oh, that's right.
The beneficiary. So are you going to list the beneficiary? No.
We just want to keep the trustee on title, and then the question is who should be the trustee? And the trustee in this case is either going to be an LLC or a fiduciary, like a lawyer or a friend. It's not going to be you.
In that first one, this LLC, I could set up an LLC in a state that does not list the owners. So for example, we use Wyoming. I could set up in a state, a business that you cannot see who owns it.
I could use Nevada. I could use, Wyoming's cheapest right now. They don't list anything.
And then I could use that as the trustee. So if somebody looks at my house, what are they going to see? They're going to see ABC LLC trustee of the 123 main street trust or whatever you name your trust, the black frog trust or green frog trust, the blue pet or blue dog.
There we go, blue dog, 'cause I like the artist that does those. We'll say, hey, we'll do the blue dog trust. It's not filed with a secretary of state or anything like that.
That is literally just a document that sits in your filing cabinet. And immediately, you're going to say, well, like, what if I have a mortgage? They're going to go freak out.
There's a Garden Saint Jerma Act that says, grantor trust where it's my residence, they can't call the note dues. So all you have to do is say hits me to the bank. By the way, is that a public record?
Are banking records a public record? The answer is no. We're going to put a big X.
Nobody can see that. It's invisible. People are always like, hey, I set up a Wyoming entity, for example.
My name's not listed on it, but I had to disclose my name to the bank. There actually is federal law that requires them, you know who the depositors are so we going to prevent money laundering and bad actors doing things terrorists and stuff like that. But that's not a public record.
I can't go search and see your bank accounts. I also can't search your tax returns. There is a president by the last name, Trump, past president, they're still trying to get his tax returns, right?
They've been going after him for years. I can't go into a public record and see your taxes are. Now if you're in a divorce or you're in supplement of proceedings, the court may order you to sign a tax transcript release so that they can pull and see what you paid, what you report as income.
They could see that, but that's not something I can do outside of the court. Like I am looking at you again as a perspective. Defend it.
I want to see what you own before I decide what the value of your case is. I'm trying to figure out the value of your case. So I'm looking at how much injury?
What are the chances of me proving my case? What are my chances of recovering on my case? I'm trying to do an estimate of cost.
I'm going to run that through the calculator and I'm going to say here's what at the settlement range of your case is, right? That's what I'm looking at. When somebody comes into the office of a plaintiff's lawyer, that's quite often what they're looking at.
Now if you're not worried about the money, you're just trying to leave a mark or you're trying to establish case law that's completely different. I'm just talking about how do you keep from inviting frivolous suits or how do you keep lawyers from bugging you as you accumulate assets? And that's by keeping yourself invisible in a public record.
That's perfect. I can do that with my house. I can put my house in an LLC if I want.
There's something called a capital gain exclusion when you sell a house. You have to own it as your primary personal residence for two or five years prior to selling. You can avoid capital gains on $250,000 if you're single, $500,000 if you're married.
And people are always worried about losing that if they put it into an entity. Putting it into a land trust or putting it into a statutory trust or putting into an LLC is not going to destroy that exclusion. You still get it, it's still you.
You're still the beneficial interest holder here. If you own the LLC, it's still you. The IRS says, oh, ignore that for tax purposes, which means you're ignoring it as though you own it individually.
Even though on a public record, somebody looking at it does not see your name, the IRS says, eh, it's you. And there's plenty of. .
. There's actually law on that. It's like, you don't have to worry.
There's actually a revenue procedure on that precise issue and the IRS is already ruled on it. You do not have to worry. The one thing you do have to worry about is let's say that I am in a state like Texas or Florida where I have an unlimited homestead exclusion on my residence, my primary residence.
Nobody can ever take the equity in that house. I don't want to ruin that and I could ruin that by using an LLC in those particular jurisdictions. So I'm probably not going to do it.
There's no reason for me to do it. But you could in other places. Like let's say it's in a state that has a really low homestead exclusion.
You may say, hey, I want to isolate that asset. I want to make sure somebody can't get it, get to that equity, and foreclose on it. Then you may use an LLC.
I could use a land trust and point it to an LLC out of the state if I want to. I could use a state like Wyoming where nobody can foreclose on your interest in that entity. Nobody can take it from you.
The most that they could get is a lien against that. It's called a charging order. It's the sole and exclusive remedy when you're going after an LLC.
So if let's say that again, I'll give you an example. Family has a large amount of real estate and they have a house that has a lot of equity in it. One of the kids of the family gets into a car accident, causes some severe injuries, maybe they were intoxicated or doing something they shouldn't be doing, speeding, whatever, and maybe there's not enough insurance coverage or coverage is denied because of what they were doing.
So it's not too difficult when we're dealing with it. Usually, like when there's a severe accident, it's huge 'cause it's young people. They have huge damages.
They're going to far outweigh whatever the insurance is. So the first thing you do is make sure you have good insurance, make sure you have an umbrella policy, but it's going to outweigh that. Like if there's wrongful death or something like that of two or three people and they're young people, it's going to be a huge amount of money.
It's going to far exceed it. And now they're looking for any assets they can get their hands on, and they see this house and they could foreclose in that house. I've actually seen that happen.
And there's nothing worse than watching somebody get removed from their home. If you want to make sure that cannot happen, you put that in an LLC, and then the most that they could get is a lean against that, and they're standing out there saying, if you ever sell that house and distribute that income, out of the LLC, out of the LLC, guys, then you have to give it to the creditor. But I can't force it, I can't foreclose, I can't do anything.
And because I'm in a jurisdiction, you have to be in a jurisdiction, you have to make sure the LLC is in a jurisdiction where they cannot foreclose on it. So you're going to be using like Wyoming. Some states have protections as well, but there's nothing quite like Wyoming.
Wyoming's odd because you can't see who the owners are and they can't take it away under any circumstances. Really, really, really hard. So that's what we would end up doing there.
Cars, boats, and RVs. Can you get your vehicle out of the name of your personal name? Here's the thing.
I'm going to say, I'm not too worried about it unless it's something that is exceedingly valuable and it's not encumbered. Most people when they're buying an RV, a boat, or a car, usually there might be a loan on it or they might be leasing, which case they can't touch it at all. But generally speaking, unless it's a collectible, I'm not too worried about it.
And why do I say that? I have a unique perspective because when I was growing up, I worked for a liquidation company where we did the auctions and we sold off cars, we sold off property, we sold off equipment at sheriff sales and for police departments and when the sheriff orders that's sold on the courtroom steps, that was us. You don't get much, and a lot can happen over the period of time from when the lawsuit starts to the end.
You can't bank on it because the value of that asset is going down. So let's say somebody sues you and they're going to come after you and you're worried that they're going to take your car, right? Oh my gosh, they're going to take my car.
It's going to be two or three years from now. What's your car going to be worth? Substantially less, and it's going to be at an auction.
So it's not like they can go out there and test drive it and get it inspected, do all this stuff. You may get to view it. A lot of times at the auto auctions, they have a red light, a green light, and a yellow light.
Like they're going to say, hey, no, it's this as is and it's not working. Yellow might be, hey, it's operating, but we're not going to be against. It's as is green is, hey, this one still maybe has a warranty on it or it's been inspected and it operates, right?
You're rolling the dice. And I could tell you that when you're doing this, it's going to be an as is. It's like, sorry, you're getting it.
Not too much value there. That's not what lawyers look at and say, hey, they have a nice car. They have a Lexus.
It's not what lawyers are getting excited about. They may see a Lexus and say, are there any other assets? But we need an asset that we can actually foreclose on and get pretty good money for, 'cause it's foreclosures aren't free, right?
If I go through that process, I have to go get my judgment, then I have to go to supplemental proceedings, I have to get the court order to A, get the asset, and B, sell the asset. Unless I'm a secured creditor, like unless I'm the lender and I get to repo it, it's not worth it. I'm going to be spending more money than I'm ever going to get out of these things.
I'm not too worried about that. If you want to get your name off of an RV or something like that, you can use a personal property trust. You could even use an LLC, but I always say like, what's the business purpose of that LLC?
It's not going to hold up. I'm just doing it for smoke and mirrors. I'm just doing it to get it out of my name.
But if you have like a quarter million dollar RV that you bought with cash, maybe we look at doing something like that. Otherwise, I'm not going to be worried about it, really not worried about it. The businesses though, that's a big one.
If you have businesses in your name, and especially if they're valuable businesses, you've got a little bit of an issue. You got a bullseye on your back. How do I get a business out of my name?
You may say my lawyer told me in my state that my name has to be listed on that business. I am a member. I am an officer director.
I have to list my stuff. That's if you remain just in your state. If I want to keep your name off of something, there's a really, really strong probability that I could and let me explain how.
I may say, set up your business in your state, but again, let's say I have a Wyoming LLC and it has no information. I may set this up as a member-managed LLC, taxed as a corporation or whatever. And the disclosure is going to be the member.
Well, who's the member now? The member is that Wyoming, LLC, that doesn't have your name on it. Your name is now off of that business.
There's generally a way to do it. We do that primarily down here on rentals. Generally speaking, if we have rentals, we're using LLCs to own them, unless you're in like a state like California where it's 800 bucks a year for an LLC for the franchise tax, like it's expensive.
We might use a Wyoming statutory trust at that point, gives you the same protection but without those costs. So we may go that route and say, whatever the case. For rentals, we can definitely get your name off it, period.
We're either using a land trust and assigning it, the beneficial interest in holding that in the LLC, or using the LLC specifically. Different states have little quirks, by the way. Like if I'm in Florida, I'm probably just doing a land trust because we don't have the dock stamps fee, which is if you have a mortgage on a piece of real estate, you have to pay tax on the mortgage.
So we want to avoid that. You have to pay tax on the mortgage if you put it in an LLC. You do not if you use a land trust, and the land trust has the same protection and there's a statute.
So what am I doing in Florida? I'm either using an LLC if I have no mortgage, or if I do have a mortgage, I'm using a land trust. I'm probably kind of juggling between the idea of using LLCs versus land trust in Florida.
That's it. It's kind of they both are effective. It's do I like vanilla or chocolate?
Still great ice cream, right? So I'm kind of looking at that. Like different states have little quirks.
But 100%, we can get those rentals out of your name. And you're going to say again, but what if I have mortgages and things like that? Your lender more than likely, if they know what you're doing, already is doing a portfolio on and already is aware of the LLCs.
If they're not and it's just you getting loans in your name and you're just buying properties, then you use the land trust, 'cause anytime they see a trust, their assumption is grantor trust sell you no due on sale. I've been doing this for 25 years. I think twice in 25 years, I've seen a mortgage company get wonky about a transfer into an LLC or into a land trust.
It's so seldom and I have not seen that at all since probably 2008. I haven't seen it at all. Most, everybody now is pretty familiar with what rental real estate's about and the exposure.
Once you had mold claims going up the Kazu, when that started happening, probably 10 years ago, it's like, there's nobody that wants to own rental properties in their name. You're just asking for trouble because if there's an issue in the rental property and it's in your name, they can take everything else you own. Like you've just invited the wolf into the hen house, right?
You don't want to do that. So you always put a rental property in some sort of box. You're putting in an LLC or a land trust.
And yes, there's other businesses that people use. Limited liability companies are not the only. The LLCs aren't the only flavor.
It's corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships. There's different state statutes. There's 50 states, 50 different flavors of all these things, right?
A lot of them follow kind of the same framework. They might have a uniform act or something that they follow and then some states may have slight variations, but you have kind of a menu, but for the most part in rental real estate, it's going to be LLCs or land trusts. If you're doing a syndication, you might see a limited partnership.
Every now and again, you see a different flavor depending on whether it's a specialized type of business, but for the most part, that's what it is and that makes our life very easy. So let's kind of back up. What we're trying to do is create a big question mark for somebody to have to look at when they're doing their equation.
So I just put the question mark there. I just want there to be this chance of recovery and somebody looking at it, going, I am not going to base the value of my case and improve this huge value because I think it's not worth this person's time to defend because they have so much asset base. In other words, if I start shaking at this tree, this is the deep pocket, I want to make sure that somebody is, they're not just shaking your money tree, trying to get stuff to fall out, just because they think it's completely full, right?
We don't want to invite the inquiry and this is how we do it. Generally speaking, all rental properties, we can keep them out of your name. All businesses, for the most part, now if you're a licensed business, you're a real estate agent, you're an attorney, CPA, things like that, you're not going to want to have your name off.
In fact, you're probably going to be required to have your name on it in public record because you're licensed. What I'm talking about is things that are holding assets or things that are operating outside, like maybe you're silent partner in things, maybe you're just a member in it, maybe it's something you just own, and maybe it's holding a whole bunch of liquid assets or maybe it has a bunch of other estate. What we don't want is someone to start following you around saying, oh, he owns that business.
Oh, he owns that business. Oh, he has that rental property. Oh, he owns this and this and this and this, and then unscrupulous lawyer or somebody who's just trying to target you because they believe that you're a high net worth person and we've all seen it, we've all read the stories on it, we are preventing that from occurring by making sure that this stuff's out of your name to the extent humanly possible, and if we have to, we can even get your house.
So let's step all the way back to the very beginning. The whole idea is security through obscurity. It's let's make sure that we're not inviting inquiry by making sure that we are invisible in a public record.
And why do we want to be invisible in a public record? Because the first thing somebody does when they start doing their calculation is they want to see what can I get and from whom? And we want to make sure that there's a big question mark when it comes to you because there's not a lot listed.
Hey, I just don't see a lot. I just, like does this, I don't know what they have. That's a good issue, right, because we want to make sure that we're not inviting the lawsuit, we're not inviting frivolous suits, we're not perceived as the deep pocket so they let everybody else go but us if there's joint liability.
We always want to be in a situation where we can settle things, we can let our insurance do what it's designed to do, which is get us out of things if we do make a mistake, if there is negligence, not saying don't pay things that you owe. I want to make sure I'm clear on that. What we're saying is minimize the damage that it could be caused.
Don't invite things into your tent, simply because through no fault of your own, you left everything out there visible. So if somebody does a private, like engages a private investigator to do an asset search on you, we want to make sure that it's as limited as possible what they can come back. If you want to tell somebody what you have, hey, I'm going in for a loan, again, I'm going to a bank and I want to get a loan, you're going to disclose stuff.
That's not a public record. Hey, if I have money in an IRA, that's not a public record. I can't just go and see, hey, what does Toby have in his IRA?
What does Toby have in his pension? Like none of that stuff is a public record. A lot of it's protected anyway.
We always call it OJ money. O. J.
Simpson, if you remember that, a lawsuit has a major civil judgment against him, the Goldman family for millions and millions of dollars, and they can't touch the NFL player's pension, 'cause there's statutory protections. They couldn't touch his house in Florida because there's statutory protection. He ended up getting arrested and doing a lot of time in Nevada.
Now he lives in this area. There's still statutory protections even here on real estate property on the equity that you own on pieces of property. So we're not so much worried about stuff like that.
It's just not visible. What we really care about is the stuff that isn't a public record that would be searchable like rental property businesses and even our primary residents and we can remove all of those. If you know what you're doing, you work with a good firm, they can remove all of that out of your name so that you do not exist on the public record so that we're not inviting issues.
All right. That's it. If you like this type of information, please smash the Like button, please subscribe.
More importantly, gimme feedback on what you'd like to see or whether you need additional comments, like if there's something that you left with with a big head scratcher. Please do not be shy. Put it in there.
This is where we get our ideas. And then also, if you know anybody who's got themself out there exposed, who keeps getting, is the litigation lightning rod, like every time you turn around, they're like, oh my God, this person's going after me for mold or something silly, they're making stuff up, or they have that ex spouse that just chases them all the time 'cause they can see everything they own and they they're coming back for more money, let 'em know, share this information with them so that they can start engaging in a little bit of privacy so that they're not creating issues for themselves unknowingly. Let's just put it that way.
All right, guys. Thanks.