Whether an individual establishes domestic or offshore structures to achieve asset protection, the structures must be funded, i.e., your assets must be physically transferred to the structure.
It is not enough to merely sign a trust, corporate or Family Limited Partnership document.
You must follow-through and transfer the deed to real estate, and transfer bank and brokerage accounts into the domestic structure, or the assets will not be protected.
Foreign structures must likewise actually receive the physical transfer of assets in order for those assets to be removed from U.S. jurisdiction and be protected by the laws of a more favorable jurisdiction.
We have unfortunately seen cases of less than professional asset protection where individuals have established asset protective entities and then neglected to actually transfer their assets to the protective structures.
Those assets were lost because they were never really protected. Proper asset protection requires that you dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s.