A Nevada LLC Should Not Be Blindly Trusted… Nothing Should

Some bad news for those who think Nevada is some sort of Magical Talisman against creditors:
 
“This Opinion once again illustrates, as have so many similar opinions before it, that it is not nearly enough that a person set up a labyrinth of legal structures to protect themselves, but that for the legal structures to hold up against creditors they must be respected as such. Here, the debtor set up a complicated structure that might normally have put off creditors, but then treated the structure willy-nilly, transferred assets around with little or no purpose or documentation, and then also — the Mortal Sin in creditor-debtor law from time immemorial — personally used and benefitted from the very assets that he claimed were not his.
 
We also again see the implicit application of the ancient legal maxim of delicatus debitor est odiosus in lege, which is translated as “the extravagant debtor is condemned in the eyes of the law”. In other words, a debtor who continues to live a wealthy lifestyle should get no sympathy from the court. So it is here, another case where the debtor claims that he has no money with which to pay their creditors, but maintains a wealthy lifestyle including the use of residences in both in Las Vegas and Southern California. Is it really any wonder that the courts frequently go out of their way to slam such debtors? Not paying one’s debtors while living it up is not only flipping The Bird to creditors, but is also doing the same thing to the Court which has an interest in seeing that judgments are enforced. Why do debtors have such a hard time seeing that?
 
The problem is fundamentally one of clients (1) having some common sense and knowing when they should live an austere lifestyle, and (2) being able to actually follow the legal structure that was created for them. An attorney can create the very best asset protection structure for a client, but if the client then starts ignoring the structure and treating all the assets as his own, then good luck defending that.”
 
Another problem with Nevada noted in the article: Nevada has a very thin record of court rulings compared with other states, and as a result tends to favor California law in the absence of Nevada decisions. This is never a good thing.