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Hello, I’m Blake Johnson and you’re listening to trusted the podcast where we talk about all things trusting others, especially attorneys. And today I want to talk about which states are the best to do your estate planning in. So pretty interesting topic. Trust Attorney Las Vegas So let’s jump right in. So what are the best states to get your estate planning done in? And if you don’t live in that state, can you go to another state to get it done? So, uh, answer the second question. Yes, you can go to any state to get your estate planning done. You just have to find an attorney who’s licensed in that state to be able to use those laws. Each attorney has to be licensed in a state to be able to advise you on that state’s laws. So for instance, I am licensed in Nevada, in Utah and Arizona. And so I can do, I can practice law in all three of those states without any problem whether I’m there or not, I can advise on what that law is going to do for that client.
Now, um, you know, you still want to make sure you have an attorney that knows what they’re talking about in that specific area of law. So I wouldn’t, you know, I’m a state planning attorney. I wouldn’t be advising clients on family law or personal injury or anything like that. Uh, but I can still practice law. I can go before the court, uh, in those states as well. So, um, you know, I do have clients from all over the country that come to Nevada to take advantage of Nevada’s trust in the state laws because um, it’s a lot more advantageous was as we’ll talk about. So, um, top eight states to do estate planning. If you’re hearing any of these eight states, you probably don’t need to go anywhere else to get your estate planning done and probably in reverse order number eight, Ohio. Then on number seven, New Hampshire number six, Wyoming, number five, Tennessee, number four, Delaware, number three, Alaska.
And then kind of tied as the top two are Nevada and South Dakota. And, um, I would probably put them in order. If I had to choose. South Dakota would be two in Nevada would be one. And, but if we start from an asset protection standpoint, just from pure trust stuff, they’re, they’re tied, they’re dead even. Um, because, um, you know, Ohio or I mean, sorry, South Dakota, um, has perpetual trust means that they can go on forever. Nevada is capital 365, so South Dakota has a slight advantage there. And then, um, Nevada has slightly a superior domestic asset protection trusts. And with domestic asset protection, trust means that, um, you know, once you set it up and you have a co-trustee who’s a resident of the state and depending on what the waiting period is, I think for both South Dakota and Nevada, it’s two years, uh, anything that any assets that are in there cannot be touched in future lawsuits Trust Attorney Las Vegas.
And in Nevada and South Dakota, what makes them so much better than else’s? They do not even allow for divorce, for child support, spousal support to pierce that asset protection trust, whereas all the other states do. So they all just kind of have different, varying levels of, of perpetuity. So how long the trust can mean in force, how long the waiting periods are for those domestic asset protection trusts, those top eight that I mentioned, they all have domestic asset protection trust that they’re good there. Um, and then it’s just a matter of whether they can pierce that for, um, preexisting creditors for, um, you know, spousal support and child support and those kinds of things. And that’s why Nevada and South Dakota are tied in that respect. They have, you know, South Dakota is a little bit better in one Nevada in another. It all kind of evens out there Trust Attorney Las Vegas.
So why would I put Nevada ahead of South Dakota? Uh, as far as in the state planning, um, the best state to do estate planning. And, and that would be because South Dakota does not allow series LLCs in Nevada does. Now what a series LLC is, is it’s basically when you, let’s talk about real estate investing, for example. And this is how we would use somebody who’s got, you know, four or five different houses, rental houses Trust Attorney Las Vegas, and to protect them all from each other and to protect the person individual’s assets themselves. We used to have to put each house in a separate LLC and that’s the way, you know somebody gets hurt on one of those properties and they sue, they can only get that property cause that’s the only thing owned by the LLC. They can’t come after the individual’s house or their personal assets and they can’t come after the other houses that they own.
Well what the series LLC says is that we can put each all of those houses under one LLC, but we designate them in separate series. So House one goes in series one, house two in series two and so on. And as each series is, acts like its own LLC from a liability standpoint, and then you only have the one filing with the state. So here in Nevada, our annual state fees for an LLC is $350 so if you times that by five, that gets expensive. Whereas if you can put that all in one series LLC, you save a ton of money and you still have the protection as if they’re in separate LLCs, not to mention tax returns. If he file a tax return for the LLC, if you’re doing that five times, that once again adds up. But if you’re just doing it for one LLC, then it becomes very advantageous in a lot more cost effective.
So we’ve converted a lot of clients to them. South Dakota does not have that option. Now, I don’t know what their annual fees are for their businesses. So it might be cheap. Like in Utah, it’s only $15 a year to keep your business active. In that case. Yeah, maybe not as big of a deal to have this series LLC. If you know South Dakota is under 50 bucks. Um, but you still may have to file tax returns for those different, uh, LLCs that you have. So that right there can make you, you want to do it. So it really just a matter of whether you want, um, the ease of, of having everything under one umbrella or if you want to have multiple businesses and keep them separate. Um, you know, that’s really just a personal preference. So that’s why I’m, I, I love working here in Nevada.
One of the reasons I actually got licensed here is because Nevada is the most advantageous state for estate planning purposes. We can use LLCs, uh, in many ways we can use, uh, trusts all the different types of trusts in the asset protection that Nevada law is a Ford to help you craft your estate plan, to help you while you’re living, not just when you pass away. So, uh, and then the last thing about in Nevada that I really like, Trust Attorney Las Vegas and I’m not sure if South Dakota has this, they probably do just cause they’re usually on the forefront of estate planning and asset protection standpoint. But if you, if you get, um, if you get sued and you’re an individual owner of an LLC in most states, the to get the protection of an LLC to where they can’t come after those assets. So let’s say for instance, you, um, you’re in a car wreck, it’s your fault and you get sued personally and you have an LLC that has a rental property in it.
And um, when they sue you personally, if in most states they can force you to, to, to sell the house in that LLC to pay the debt because you’re only a single owner, so you’re not technically a partnership. So you can’t get protected from the LLC. You have to have at least two members for that to be possible. Well, in Nevada it says, nope. If you are a one member LLC, doesn’t matter, they cannot come after your personal assets or sorry Trust Attorney Las Vegas, your assets in the LLC, they can’t force you to liquidate. Now, if you ever take distributions, so the monthly rent check comes and you take it out of the LLC and put it in your personal account. Sure they could attach to that. But as long as it stays in the LLC, they can’t get that money. They also can’t force you to sell that house to pay the debt. So another great asset protection standpoint of Nevada trusts and estate planning. So that’s, um, in a nutshell why I like Nevada, why we, we have clients from all over the country who come here to take advantage of Nevada’s trusts, laws and, uh, and estate planning and asset protection standpoint. And if you have any questions on that, I’d be happy to answer them for you. Thanks for listening.
