More Americans are choosing to retire, invest, or relocate outside the United States, but many don’t realize their existing estate plan may not provide the same protection once they establish a life abroad. In this episode of Trust This, asset protection attorney Joe Seagle explains why a revocable living trust, will, LLC, or other legal structures created in the United States may not automatically be recognized or function the same way in another country. Every nation has its own laws governing property ownership, inheritance, taxation, and estate administration, making proper planning essential before making an international move.
Joe discusses several important considerations for anyone planning to live or own property overseas. He explains why it’s critical to work with experienced legal and financial professionals in your destination country, establish local banking relationships, and understand how foreign laws may affect your assets. He also covers why some individuals need separate wills for different countries, how to avoid accidentally revoking an existing estate plan, and why careful coordination between your U.S. and international planning documents is so important. These proactive steps can help reduce legal complications and protect your assets for future generations.
The conversation also explores how offshore trusts may fit into a broader international asset protection strategy for individuals with assets or residency in multiple countries. While offshore planning isn’t appropriate for everyone, understanding when these strategies may be beneficial can help you make more informed decisions as your financial life becomes increasingly global. If you’re considering retiring abroad, purchasing foreign real estate, or obtaining a second passport, this episode provides practical guidance to help you avoid costly mistakes. Watch the full episode of Trust This with asset protection attorney Joe Seagle to learn how thoughtful international estate planning can help protect your wealth wherever life takes you.
Transcript
Did you know that if you leave the United States and move to another country, whether permanently or temporarily, your asset protection and estate plan that you’ve put in place in the United States may not work completely in that other country?
Hey, I’m Joe Seagle. I’m an asset protection and estate planning attorney in Florida. And we work with folks all the time who are leaving the country. We’ve seen this happening a lot more frequently over the past few years where people are leaving the United States. A lot of folks are finding that it’s much cheaper to retire outside the United States. Their dollar goes a lot farther, and the health care is just as good in these other countries and a lot cheaper. So they’re leaving the country to get a permanent residency visa in another country or sometimes they’re even getting a second passport and living in the other country primarily. Now, they’re still leaving a little bit of assets in the United States.
So they have an estate plan, an asset protection plan that still works for those assets that are here. But let’s imagine that they buy a house or they buy an apartment in another country. we have friends who have moved and they have houses in multiple countries. Well, your will and your Revocable Living Trust and your LLCs and your land trust and everything that we’ve set up for you here in the United States may not work in Uruguay or Spain or Ireland or Canada or wherever you may end up with your second passport or your permanent residency. So our first advice is whenever someone is getting ready to move to another country, they’re getting ready to immigrate. E-M-I-G-R-A-T-E, immigrate out of the United States.
We recommend number one, they find a good financial advisor, an attorney in that country to talk to and who will help you understand the rules of the road financially when you get there. For instance, in some countries, if you own property in a trust when you die, it is treated totally differently than if you want it in your name or maybe even if if you want it in a local company.
In that country or another type of entity. The taxation may be horrendously high when you die compared to the United States. So you’re gonna definitely want to have a lawyer, a financial advisor, a real estate, or an estate agent in that country who understands the rules of the road there. And you’re gonna want to have a a banker. You’re gonna want to open a bank account in that country with the currency of that country. So go ahead and buy the the currency, whatever it is, euros, reales, whatever pesos canadian dollars whatever it happens to be for that country and open a bank account there because you’re gonna have to be able to pay for things when you’re there also check your credit cards certain countries and certain areas of the world they may not take you know certain credit cards they some prefer MasterCard some prefer visa some will not take American Express at all discover they may have never heard of it.
So you don’t want to get to this other country thinking, yeah, I’ll just be able to pull money out of my bank account at you know whatever bank you use here in the United States when I’m in Europe. And it’ll just be really simple and easy and I can just write checks over there and I can pay like I would normally pay. That’s not gonna be the case. You are in a different financial system and a different in a different country. And so you’ll need to get that set up. You’ll need to talk to the lawyers and and and financial advisors and estate agent in the home country when you get there about how to title the proper property correctly. And then you may have to do a will for that country that deals with your property there. And you’re gonna want to make sure that that will doesn’t have any language in it that says, I hereby revoke all other wills I’ve ever made. Because you do that, you could be revoking the will in the United States. By the same token, if you have a will in your new expatriated country that you’ve moved to, you don’t want to amend your will here in the United States and go, I hereby revoke all other wills I’ve ever entered because now you may have terminated that will over there. So you’re gonna have to be very careful with your planning to do this. Now what some of our clients do sometimes is they will set up an offshore trust.
And we don’t do those. I’ll tell you that right now. We don’t. there are much better lawyers who do offshore trusts in in all over the social media out there that you can find. But they can set up an offshore trust and then that trust will maybe own a an entity in your new country, and it’ll hold the bank accounts, it’ll and then that entity will hold the bank accounts and own the real estate in that other country.
That offshore trust can also tie in with your United States estate plan and asset protection plan strategy. So some people, if you find that you are ending up in multiple countries where you’re going to be living, or you’re going to have multiple passports in in in other countries, multiple permanent residency visas in other countries, you would probably want to seriously consider doing an offshore trust and then having entities in each of those countries that are then owned by the offshore trust. Or you set up the offshore trust have one entity one lc maybe in nevis or somewhere else and then that llc then owns all of your other llcs also in the united states so then everything is handled there so just something to think about we get a lot more questions about these and if you like this please follow subscribe and comment down below and let us know what you think.
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