How to Protect Your IRA in Two Steps

People will tell you that your IRA is safe and they're wrong. Your IRA is only safe from a lawsuit against you and somebody coming after your IRA. If your IRA is invested in an asset class such as real estate where it can be sued, the IRA itself is exposed. Your IRA is exposed in the sense that it can be disqualified. If any of the transactions of the IRA are exposed.

There's two things that we do. The first thing that we do is, we can split up multiple IRA accounts. That way if any one type of investment is disqualified or has some type of issue that the IRS would look at? This limits your exposure, because it's only that one account that we have to worry about.

The second thing that you could do is set up a self-directed IRA with an LLC. I like to do it with a Series LLC. What that allows us to do is if you look at our videos regarding the Series LLC structure, we can take each different asset belonging to the IRA and put it into its own series.

That way if there's an issue with asset A, it doesn't affect asset B, C, D, etc. And this way, if you have one property that has a lawsuit against it, somebody can't take your entire IRA amount. They could only take a very limited amount of that structure.  Be sure that your IRA is properly structured with asset protection, because it's not by default the safest way to do it.

My name is Scott Smith, I'm an asset protection attorney with real estate. I'm a real estate investor myself, and I want to help you. Click here to set up a consultation today!