The law charges bankruptcy trustees and creditors with finding the debtor’s money. That task often is difficult because debtors place assets in specially designed entities. An entire industry is dedicated to creating such vehicles to protect an owner’s assets from creditor’s claims, while still providing the owner with access to those assets.
But courts are developing legal theories to thwart such plans. For example, a debtor may enlist a professional to design an asset-protection plan and create an entity. As time goes by, the debtor forgets that he and the entity are not the same. The debtor begins to views the entity’s assets his own, since he put them there and generally controls them.
