Luz Lopez

You have worked hard to build your business, fund your retirement and provide for your family.  You may have even formed a living trust to reduce taxes and “protect” your wealth for future generations. But there are real and substantial risks to your assets and estate that you may not even aware of.  That is…

As reflected in recent articles in The Monitor, over the past year, Johnson Fistel added estate planning and asset protection services to meet the needs of its clients.  Toward that end, the firm has been providing powerful legal tools like wills and trusts to help clients plan for their future and mitigate tax obligations.  But…

Where were you born and what makes that city special? I was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. Everything about Missoula is special. I love that I can fly-fish on the rivers in the summer and drive twenty minutes to the nearest ski hill in the winter. What activities or hobbies do you enjoy the…

On September 24, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced an approximately $36 million award to a whistleblower whose information led to successful enforcement actions by the SEC and another federal agency.  This award comes less than two weeks after the SEC awarded another whistleblower $110 million—the agency’s second largest whistleblower award ever—and brings…

What do you get when you play a country song backwards?  Your dog, job and trailer back.  This joke actually has some interesting parallels to one of the best estate planning and asset preservation strategies that you may have never heard of – the ILIT. If your estate is greater than the current estate/gift tax…

Trusts serve as the foundation of effective, integrated estate plans, and can help preserve and keep your assets from going through the probate process when you pass.  Without the protection of a good trust, your accumulated wealth and family’s future are on shaky ground. There are many different kinds of trusts, including revocable, irrevocable, and…

One of the best ways to keep assets available for retirement in California is the statutorily authorized Private Retirement Plan (“PRP”), which is entirely exempt from judgments and bankruptcy if properly drafted and used for retirement purposes. Under California law, non-qualified retirement savings plans may be protected if certain requirements are satisfied. According to case law,…