Why You Must Lawsuit-Proof Yourself Today
“One lawsuit can ruin you”, says Kevin Wessell, an expert in asset protection. “When it happens to someone else it’s a statistic. When it happens top you, it’s a nightmare. Take my word for it”.
Or ask John Mathews and his wife Millie. They had a good life with a nice home, money in the bank, a solid portfolio of stocks and bonds, a six-figure IRA and a profitable Chicago plumbing supply business. They worked hard and within a few years hoped to retire to Florida and enjoy a financially secure retirement.
But life is unpredictable. John discovered that one day when he was sued by an ex-partner from a minor business deal that ended years earlier. A sinking feeling consumed John as he read the lawsuit. The outrageous misdeeds that John allegedly committed during their short partnership were all lies.
Then came the shocker: John’s ex-business associate demanded millions in ‘damages.’ Suddenly, John’s life soured. The ridiculous claims and insane demands for millions were unbelievable. John’s anger quickly turned to fear as he realized that this was one lawsuit for which he had no liability insurance.
John was confident that once he saw his attorney all would be well. Undoubtedly his lawyer would assure him that he had little to worry about. But, John’s lawyer gave him no consolation. The lawyer agreed that the case against John seemed shaky, but it was always possible John could lose. His lawyer didn’t expect the
ex-partner to be awarded much money even if he did win his case, but john was also being sued for punitive damages. His lawyer reminded John that “You never know what a jury will do,” All John’s lawyer could be certain of was that it would cost John thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend his case and that it could take years to resolve – years of legal fees, aggravation, worry and uncertainty for John and Millie.
John left his lawyer’s office with the lawyers words ricocheting in his mind: “You just never know what a jury will do. John’s worry turned to panic. What would happen to his assets? Would he and Millie lose their home? Their investments? Their savings? Could they lose their business? Was John’s retirement account safe? Could John be forced into bankruptcy and lose everything?
John wondered if it was too late to protect himself. How could he shield his assets to keep them safe no matter how this lawsuit ended? Could John better shelter himself from this and future lawsuits?
John was only one more lawsuit target. Like a lot of people, he suddenly and unexpectedly realized that he too could lose every, thing in the legal lottery he was about to play.
It Can Happen to You
I tell you about John and Millie Mathews not because their story is unusual. Quite the opposite. Thousands of such stories happen every day. I know. For forty years I earned my living protecting people who shared similar tales with me. Their fears always come down to those same nagging questions: “What will happen to my assets if I do lose this lawsuit? How can I protect myself before I lose everything?”
As you might expect, my clients include sports icons, movie stars and industry moguls. But most are everyday folks whose life story is not unlike the Mathews’. Every morning they awake, put in a hard day’s work and aspire to build financial security for themselves and their families.
They too knew about lawsuits. They too had heard the maddening stories about others who were wiped out by a lawsuit or some other financial disaster. But these terrible things only happened to others. It couldn’t happen to them. Until it does!
Some of these now poorer but wiser souls showed up at my office too late. The sheriff had already auctioned their home, carted away their furniture or seized their bank account. I could give them little or no help.
Fortunately, most sought my assistance in time. They wanted their wealth protected before they were sued or other problems arose. These clients we could protect. Still, most people don’t think much about asset protection until they’re sued.
Why, I continue to ask, do nine out often Americans have no lawsuit protection aside from their liability insurance? What I find even more amazing is that so many successful people carefully scrutinize their every business deal, demand the best business and investment advice and even micro-plan their vacations; yet they do absolutely nothing to fortify their wealth against lawsuits and the hundreds of other financial pitfalls that everyone faces during their lifetime. Why is this?
“Procrastination is the main reason,” says Jim ‘The Hammer’ Shapiro, author of ‘Sue the Bastards’ and a New York personal injury lawyer who won tens of millions in judgments against hapless individuals and businesses. “Few people have lawsuit protection high on their agenda until they are hit with a lawsuit. Then they sweat. But once they are sued, they’ll find it much harder to protect themselves. The procrastinator is always my most vulnerable target because their assets are so easily picked. The ‘deep pocket’, vulnerable defendants are who / want to sue!”
The well-protected are less Inviting targets for a lawsuit. The bottom line is that wealth is good. Vulnerable wealth is bad.
Procrastination is most people’s obstacle to timely defensive planning. Think about it. Only one in five adult Americans have even written a simple will, yet what is more certain than death? Little wonder so few people think to protect themselves before they are sued.
Americans are not risk-takers. We just don’t always see things from the right perspective. For example, about fifty million lawsuits will be filed this year while there will be fewer than five million injuries and deaths from car accidents. You are ten timesmore likely to get sued than to injure or kill someone in a car accident. Would you drive without car insurance? You would be ten times as foolish not to become lawsuit protected. New civil lawsuits this year will be eighty times the number of residential fires. Undoubtedly you insured your home against fire, yet you probably have done little or nothing to safeguard your home against a lawsuit.
Are You the Next Target?
I have often wondered why I have such passion to lawsuit-proof people. It may be because I have seen so much devastation that a lawsuit can cause. It’s also because lawsuits are epidemic. It will only get worse. Each year brings more lawsuits and still bigger awards. Litigation is Americas fastest growing business, and few of us will get through life without being victimized by one or more major lawsuits. The fifty million new lawsuits this year is only one dismal statistic. In actuality, there will be many more lawsuit defendants because a lawsuit can ensnare multiple defendants. We don’t have precise numbers, but there may be 100 million lawsuit defendants at any given moment. Whatever the number, it is indisputable that we have too many lawsuits. Nor can we forget the billions paid each year on the mere threat of a lawsuit.
Why has America become lawsuit-crazy? Sociologists, economists, politicians and lawyers have their own theories. From my perch as a practicing lawyer I have my observations. We have too many lawyers and too many needless laws. We have too few judges with the courage or common sense to summarily throw out a blatantly frivolous lawsuit. And we have too many juries who don’t rule on the basis of liability. They see their role to redistribute wealth from ‘deep pocket’ defendants to plaintiffs who win their sympathy.
People seeking protection are neither crooks nor immoral. They are taking advantage of the laws designed and intended to protect against life’s vagaries.
Most importantly, we have created an incentive for people to sue. For example, any punitive damage claim can enrich a plaintiff who has suffered little or no actual injury with a multi-million-dollar windfall. Why shouldn’t people sue? A sue-happy plaintiff won’t invest a dime of their own in legal fees, because lawyers who will take their case for a contingent fee are everywhere.
There is plenty wrong with our legal system. But it’s not only the fault of the system – as perverse as it is. The fault is with us as a society. We have become a nation of victims. When things go wrong, as they invariably do, we instinctively point the blame elsewhere. The lawsuit is the natural consequence of our distorted national mindset.
Walter K. Olson explains the phenomena in The Litigation Explosion:
“[The lawsuit] clogs and jams the gears of commerce, sowing friction and distrust between the productive enterprises on which material progress depends and on all who buy their products, work at their plants and offices or join in their undertakings. It seizes on former love and intimacy as raw materials to be transmuted into hatred and estrangement. It exploits the bereavement that some day awaits the survivors of us all and turns it to an unending source of poisonous recrimination. It torments the provably innocent and rewards the palpably irresponsible. It devours hard-won savings and worsens every animosity of a diverse society. It is the special American burden, the one feature hardly anyone admires of a society that is otherwise envied the world around.”
Amen!
No less outspoken against the lawsuit deluge is Judicial Watch, a Capital Hill non-partisan, non-profit foundation in their observation: “The American legal system is dangerously corrupt. It picks the pockets of hardworking Americans by putting literally billions of dollars into the pockets of greedy lawyers, turning neighbor against neighbor and threatening to derail the rule of law.” Nor can you deny the scope of the lawsuit explosion when you consider the statistics:
- The US tort system is the most expensive in the industrial world. US tort costs consume 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product.
- This is substantially higher than that of any other developed country.
- US legal system costs are growing at four times our economic growth.
- Class action lawsuits have increased 50 percent in only ten years.
- Asbestos claims have doubled in five years. And lawsuits are threatening virtually every industry.
Why You Must Lawsuit-Proof Yourself Today
- America has one million lawyers, the highest per capita.
- China, has five times our population, and only 110,000 lawyers.
- America has 70 percent of the world’s lawyers and 90 percent of the world’s litigation.
- You have one chance in five that you will be sued next year. (One in three if you are a doctor or business owner.)
With so many lawyers it is inevitable that we have so many lawsuits. The mere thought of a million lawyers running around looking for their next victim should signal a clear and present danger to anyone who has exposed assets. You can’t blame every lawyer, though. Not every lawyer is in the lawsuit business. And you can still find a plaintiff’s lawyer or two who won’t file a frivolous lawsuit. They use their good professional judgment about who and when to sue. They don’t abuse our judicial system. Yet how many more lawyers do throw around lawsuits like confetti? How many lawyers will file any lawsuit for a fast buck? How many lawyers don’t care if their lawsuit is meritless as long as they can extort enough money from some defendant?
The tide has turned. The American Bar Association Journal (the largest US publication for lawyers) in its article Protect Your Assets Before Lawsuits Arise, counsels their 300,000 members that asset protection is as critical for them as it is for their clients. One trial lawyer interviewed for the article frankly admits, “I don’t want people doing to me what I do to them in court everyday.” The Wall Street Journal, responding to the ABA article, argued that since the lawyers realize the legal system is out of control, they should change the system and not merely protect themselves against it. The fact is that our legal system has yet to be reformed, and it won’t be any time soon. Don’t expect the lawsuit threat to abate. It will only get worse. It’s far smarter to join the lawyers who are themselves running for shelter and lawsuit-proof yourself.
Playing the Legal Lottery
From toddlers to executors of the deceased, anyone can sue and no one is immune – not even the President of the United States.
We can’t blame only the lawyers. We should never forget that we would have far fewer lawsuits if we had fewer people so willing to sue. Walter Kelly’s cartoon character, Pogo Possum, had it right: “We have met the enemy and they is us.”
Ask yourself: Why shouldn’t people sue when it costs them nothing if they lose but a few hours of their time, and they can gain so much if they win? Why work when they can sue their way to great wealth? Why play the lottery or hit the slots in Las Vegas when their chances to win are so much better when they gamble in court? And as one client philosophized, “Why marry for money when it’s so much more pleasant to spend a few hours with a good lawyer rather than a lifetime with a bad spouse?”
Everybody wants a piece of the action and their own chance to win the legal lottery. Kids sue parents, partners sue partners, patients sue doctors, customers sue manufacturers, students sue teachers and parishioners sue clergy.
More frightening than the blizzard of lawsuits is the number of ridiculous cases that wiggle their way through the courts and reach a jury. And it seems that the more bizarre the case, the greater the plaintiffs victory. Scan the newspapers and magazines. Watch TV. Laugh to the stand-up comics. Who can most scintillate and humor us with the day’s nuttiest lawsuit? Why has litigation become our favorite form of entertainment?
Why You Must Lawsuit-Proof Yourself Today
I chuckled my way through a book with its own macabre brand of lawsuit humor: Buy This Book or We’ll Sue You (Citadel Press). Its authors, Laura and Attila Benko, compiled scores of true cases that are supposedly more absurd and funnier than fiction. Think for a moment, though: Are these lawsuits really humorous when you consider the great waste of time, money and energy that their defendants expended to defend against them? How funny are these frivolous cases when you consider the aggravation, worry and grief that so many defendants were forced to endure before they could shake themselves free of these nutty litigants and their stupid lawsuits? More disheartening was that some of these whacky plaintiffs actually won their case. This again bolsters my argument that our legal system is a legal lottery where even the bad case has a good chance.
The cases are legendary: Consider the 82 year old lady whose MacDonald’s coffee landed on her lap while she was driving and juggling her hot coffee between her knees. Our geriatric plaintiff successfully sued McDonald’s for millions and also Wal-Mart, who sold her the auto cup holder. What can we say about the New York couple who won ten million dollars from the city after they were struck by a train while having sex on the tracks? There is the Florida drunk who, while climbing a fence, was zapped by a transformer and sued the six taverns that had served him liquor that day – as well as the electric company. Or the Georgia couple who sued Ford after their 3 year old boy died in a Ford van where they locked him up for several hours in 90-degree heat (the parents argued that Ford should feature a safety device to cool parked cars). I could go on endlessly because such insane cases are now commonplace. I predicted it. The fast food industry is being sued for turning us into a nation of fatties. Cereal producers are also targets. Can the chocolate industry be far behind? Who’s next? Who isn’t?
You might think that these dumb cases are only legal anomalies and the rare curiosities within our legal system. You would be wrong. Hundreds – if not thousands – of equally nonsensical cases are pending in your local courthouse. I know. I protect people from these ludicrous cases everyday. Or take a moment to scan the weekly bar journals. You’ll find plenty of other equally far-fetched cases breaking new legal ground. Each story features a grinning plaintiffs lawyer who bagged another defendant.
Lawsuit mongers are abusing our legal system in record numbers. America is the world’s lawsuit capital and California is America’s lawsuit capital. To stem their litigation avalanche, California created the Vexatious Litigation Act to identify plaintiffs who overload their courts with frivolous lawsuits. Chronic plaintiffs cannot be denied their constitutional right’ to sue, but they can’t sue in California without an attorney. Nevertheless, one chronic Victim’ filed two hundred lawsuits in seven years. The court clerk who identifies the lawsuit junkies (and who was unsuccessfully sued eleven times in two years) admits: “I don’t exaggerate when I say I am extremely frightened by these people.”
You do not have to do anything wrong to get sued. You only have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nor do you have to do anything wrong to get sued – and lose. You only have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or somehow stumble across some greedy lunatic who is grieved. Voila! Your wealth is soon in their pocket!
Perhaps I shouldn’t call any case ludicrous. After all, a jury decides whether a case has merit. And what is the law but what a court determines it to be in any given case. That’s another problem with our runaway legal system. The law is no longer predictable. No lawyer will speculate where a case will wind up. “You never know what a court will do.” That’s what every lawyer says. How different is that from predicting what a roulette wheel will do? It’s random chance.
Our theories of liability have become so stretched and convoluted that no lawyer really knows the law anymore. Perhaps this explains why some lawyers accept cases that others won’t. It’s also why no defense lawyer can assure their client that they can’t lose. Our legal system is indeed a crapshoot where a plaintiff doesn’t play with his own chips, and the defendant inevitably loses some of his own.
One Lawsuit Can Wipe You Out
More distressing still, is that even when you can endure the odds of being sued and the uncertainty of whether you will win or lose, you may be hit with a devastating judgment. You can’t predict what you can lose in a lawsuit. A plaintiff who wins a few dollars in actual damages may pocket millions more in punitive damages. Any buyer of a defective $20 product can turn it into a class action that can cost the manufacturer millions or billions. One lawsuit can start an avalanche.
One lawsuit can start an avalanche. Enough nuisance lawsuits can topple the most powerful business or wealthiest family.
Enough nuisance lawsuits can topple the most powerful business or wealthiest family. We have seen this with litigation against tobacco, pharmaceuticals, asbestos and countless other industries that are no longer in business only because they fell victim to a barrage of lawsuits.
This uncertainty of outcome explains why nine out of ten lawsuits are settled. What defendant can go to trial confident of victory? What defendant can foresee what they will lose? What defendant can afford the exorbitant legal fees to get answers to these questions?
So plaintiffs’ lawyers effectively use the lawsuit as their weapon to extort a whopping settlement. The economics are always with the plaintiffs. The defendant is coerced to pay ‘go away’ money, because the defendant who has exposed wealth simply has too much to lose by gambling in court.
Of course, a lawsuit can involve more than money a lawsuit can attack you personally, particularly when it involves fraud, racketeering, conspiracy or some other moral lapse. Or a lawsuit may unjustifiably attack your professional competence. Ask a doctor how it feels to be characterized in a malpractice lawsuit as ‘negligent, incompetent or reckless.’
I have a leading New York thoracic surgeon as a client. He was sued twice in his 30-year career and will tell you, “You know you did nothing wrong, yet you begin to question your competence. Inevitably your self-confidence and self-esteem drops a few notches.” Sometimes it’s not about money – it’s about your reputation.
Every lawsuit creates some stress and uneasiness. However, a major lawsuit can disrupt your social relationships, cloud your thoughts, dampen your enthusiasm and cause you that nagging sense of insecurity. The essence of the lawsuit was perhaps best voiced by the Tort Informer: “The law provides incredible financial incentives to seek out a victim with deep pockets, drag him into court, ruin his reputation, wear him down with endless discovery demands, pay a fortune to defend himself and then extort a settlement. This is not justice in any sense of the word.”
Develop the Survivor Mentality
Of course, not every lawsuit is frivolous. You should be sued if you breach a lease, default on a loan, negligently rear-end another car or are clearly in the wrong. A plaintiff then has every right to legal recourse.
But should a claim’s legitimacy give you any less reason to protect yourself? I don’t think so. It’s not whether a lawsuit against you is justified, but whether you can afford to lose. One bonafide lawsuit can still wipe you out. That’s why you need a financial self- defense plan regardless of the lawsuit. Nor will you be sued only when you do something wrong. You can as quickly be sued when you do everything right.
You may be uncomfortable with the objectives of asset protection. Some folks are. They view asset protection as illegal or immoral, or a way to cheat creditors of their rightful due. But they would be wrong. People who want protection aren’t crooks or immoral. They have a strong survival instinct and are only taking advantage of the laws that were intended to protect against life’s financial uncertainties and risks.
Asset protection – properly practiced – is certainly not illegal. Of course you cannot commit illegal acts such as perjury, violate bankruptcy laws ot fraudulently conceal assets from creditors; and a good asset protection plan neither encourages nor permits these or other illegal acts. Your asset protection plan must be fully compliant with every law. This is basic to sound planning
Do you consider it ethically improper to shelter your assets from those who assert a rightful claim? Then consider asset protection as financial self-defense to not only combat frivolous and harassing lawsuits, but also to make you a less likely lawsuit target. You can then live your life more confident that your financial security can’t be easily stripped away.
Whatever your ethical or moral concerns about protecting your assets against lawsuits, try this approach: Protect your assets. If you are rightfully sued, then negotiate a fair settlement or pay the claim. When your assets are protected, you have that option. When your assets are exposed, you have no option.
Four Wealth-Destroying Myths
You may think that your wealth is safe – or that you don’t n asset protection. If so, you probably deluded yourself with one the common myths:
Myth #1: “I won’t get sued. I’m too careful.”
I repeat: You don’t have to do anything wrong to get sued Nevertheless, you may insist, “I have never been sued before and I can’t see why I would get sued now.”
One lady attending one of my seminars explained her apathy toward asset protection: “I’m a schoolteacher. What legal problems can a schoolteacher have?” True, she may never be sued as a schoolteacher, yet only a year later she was sued for a million plus dollars for negligently handling her mother’s estate.
There are many unforeseeable reasons one gets sued today. A lawsuit need not relate to your work. And no matter how cautious or careful you are, you can only do so much to reduce the odds that you will get sued. It’s not only the doctors, real estate developers and business owners. Everyone is a potential lawsuit target. To further prove the point, at this same California seminar, a young man asked, “What tips do you have to avoid liability?”
I facetiously replied, “Don’t get out of bed in the morning. The young man retorted, “I tried that and got sued for paternity.”
That reply brought laughter from all of us. Nevertheless, it goes to show you that no matter how you live your life or what 70 do for a living, there is ample opportunity to get into legal trou So who is safe? Nobody! Professionals, of course, are the most profitable lawsuit targets. When a surgery fails, a trial is lost or an investment sours, the patient, client or investor concludes that the professional is to blame. Unfavorable outcomes translate into ‘sue the professional’. These plaintiffs ‘walk the Yellow Pages’ for a lawyer ready and willing to take the case. Others are also high on the lawsuit hit list: Parents of teenage drivers, commercial real estate owners, small business owners, accountants and other business advisors, architects and engineers, corporate officers and directors, directors of charitable organizations, police officers, celebrities, sports figures and the conspicuously wealthy. In actuality, it’s not so much what you do for a living as what you own – and whether it is exposed – that determines your vulnerability.
The proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes can also get sued. One 83 year old great grandmother met with me after she accidentally hit the gas rather than the brake and slammed her Lexus through a K-Mart storefront and seriously injured several shoppers. She will be sued for considerably more than her insurance coverage. On the brighter side, this will be her first lawsuit in 83 years. We all run out of luck… eventually*.
Myth #2: “I don’t need asset protection. I don’t have enough assets to protect.”
And how many times have I heard this line? How would you feel if you lost what few assets you do own? I was talking to a young man about asset protection and he assured me that he was too poor to worry about lawsuits or asset protection. His entire net worth consisted of his $15,000 car and $10,000 in savings. $25,000 is modest wealth.
I asked, “How long did it take you to earn those few assets?” “About five years,” he replied. “I’m a landscape worker and don’t earn much.” “How would you feel if someone seized your car and bank account?” “Devastated.”
My business as an asset protection professional has taught me that wealth is relative.
If you have any assets, you need protection.
It is not only the rich and affluent who need to have asset protection. You must protect whatever assets are important to you.
While going to give another seminar I was passing through New York’s LaGuardia airport and got a shoe shine. The affable bootblack engaged me in conversation and asked what brought me to town. I told him that I was to give an asset protection seminar and he told me about his own financial problems. He was being sued for $100,000 on a bank loan he guaranteed for his son. He then explained that he owned only his Bronx home with a $100,000 equity. To some people, $100,000 is hardly serious wealth. While they would hate to lose it, such a loss wouldn’t hurt their lifestyle. But this $100,000 represented this man’s entire fortune. How many more shoes must this fellow shine to replace his $100,000 nest egg?
I get calls from people from throughout the country who have creditor or lawsuit problems. Many of these callers have only a few dollars in the bank, a small home equity or perhaps a few investments. But whatever their assets, it is precious to them. Protecting their few assets is as important to them as protecting a millionaire’s millions. You must treat your wealth accordingly and protect whatever assets are important to you.
Myth #3: “I don’t need protection. I’m insured.”
Here’s another fallacy. You buy a liability policy and say, “That s it, I’m covered. If I’m sued, my insurance will take care of it.’
I can give you many reasons why your liability insurance can never be a complete substitute for asset protection. You may not realize that liability insurance fully covers only about one in three lawsuits. So how do you shelter yourself from the two out three lawsuits that won’t be covered by insurance? Consider possibilities: You get sued for breach of contract, default on a note or a family dispute. Think about the thousands of uninsured claims that you can encounter. The possibilities are endless.
One physician friend spent years telling me that he didn’t need lawsuit protection beyond his five million dollar malpractice policy. You can be sure he wished that he had better protected himself after an employee sued him for two million dollars for sexual harassment.
And his malpractice insurance didn’t shelter his substantial net worth from Medicare’s demands that he repay millions that he allegedly overbilled.
Even when a claim is insured, will your insurance fully cover the claim? A million-dollar liability policy doesn’t mean much when you’re sued for two million. And given today’s unpredictable and ludicrous jury awards, who can foresee a judgment that they will someday be forced to pay. You will then discover that liability insurance is never your complete answer.
The countless policy exclusions and inevitable loopholes that let your insurance company deny coverage are another issue.
Your insurance company won’t always defend a claim against you – even when you think your claim is covered. Why else are so many ‘bad faith’ claims now pending by insureds against their recalcitrant insurance companies?
You can’t even be certain that your insurance company will be in business when you need them. I am now trying to protect the assets of scores of physicians in Ohio, New Jersey and several other states now that their insurance company filed bankruptcy. These doctors thought that they were protected, but now they’re exposed with little or no coverage. Many are presently defending against lawsuits.
I’m not against liability insurance. I advise my clients to buy liability insurance because insurance is a smart first step for asset protection. Buy whatever liability insurance you can afford – but consider insurance only your starting point. Liability insurance can’t replace a good asset protection plan which can protect you against any type or size claim. Only asset protection can give you complete financial safety.
Myth #4: “Asset protection is too costly. I can’t afford it.”
How can protecting your assets be too costly? It’s a vital investment. The average family can usually build strong protection for no more than they would spend on their vacation. We have sheltered large fortunes for not much more. And you can take many protective steps that would cost you absolutely nothing I had one short sighted cardiologist complain to me that he didn’t have the spare cash to set up the few entities that I recommended to safeguard his three million net worth. He thought my proposed $15,000 legal fee was too costly. Yet this doctor spends $65,000 a year for malpractice insurance which protects him only against malpractice claims – and only for one million dollars. Next year, the good doctor will pay another $65,000 (though his premiums will probably increase) for the same limited protection. In comparison, I could give this physician complete protection against any lawsuit or any other financial threat – for an unlimited amount – and for the rest of his life, for less than one-fourth of what he pays each year for his malpractice insurance. So which is the better deal.. .insurance or asset protection? That’s why I say asset protection isn’t an expense. It’s an investment – a great investment!
Tip-Toe Through The Minefield
A lawsuit is, of course, only one of several ways to lose your wealth. It’s certainly not the only path to financial ruin. Life is a financial minefield. No matter how carefully you tread, there’s danger with every step.
For example, divorce is one of life’s most devastating forms of lawsuit yet how many people think about divorce as a ‘lawsuit’. You can be happily married today; still the statistics are that you Will someday divorce. And as unlikely as it may seem now, you may go through several divorces.
So, protecting yourself nowadays means defending yourself from the inevitable, or extremely high probability, to say the least.