Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in New York
My house is owned by my irrevocable living trust. The trust is owned by a Wyoming S Corporation which is owned by another irrevocable living trust. How well is the house protected against creditors?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Who is potential creditor’s would you perhaps be referring to? Yours? Creditor protection is very fact specific to the action which gives rise to the debt. If there’s a lot of money on the table then the creditor will hire a powerful law firm and they will do whatever is needed to “pierce the corporate veil“ and bust the trust open unless you have smart lawyers on your side who have crossed their T‘s and dotted their i’s with respect to keeping the trusts and Wyoming Corporation up-to-date in all respects. If the house burned down and 20 people burned to death I don’t think any structure is going to protect the equity in the house no matter what. If you were drunk and drove a school bus full of children off a bridge I don’t think the structure would hold up either. So it’s a very very fact specific answer and often these laws have not been fully tested in all of the courts.
Good luck.