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The Wealth Elevator

Lane Kawaoka speaking on a conference panel, representing the asset protection ladder framework for accredited real estate investorsLane Kawaoka standing in front of a modern building, representing the asset protection ladder framework for real estate investors

From 2009 to 2012, I owned close to a dozen rental properties. Not one of them sat inside an LLC. I was just an engineer stacking up small multifamily deals, and asset protection wasn’t even on my radar. I was more worried about finding the next deal than what would happen if a tenant fell down a flight of stairs.

Looking back, I got lucky. A lot of investors don’t.

A few years later, a lawyer scared me straight, and I built a real structure: five Atlanta rentals in a Georgia LLC, four Birmingham rentals and an Indianapolis property in an Alabama LLC, with both of those rolling up under a holding company. It wasn’t the only way to do it (there are a couple dozen ways to build this), but it was a plan, and it’s the kind of thing you refine over the years, not throw together the week you get sued.

I recently sat down with Doug Lodmell, a nationally recognized asset protection attorney who’s been doing this for over 30 years, to walk through how he structures things specifically for accredited investors (not the generic “get an LLC” advice you see everywhere, but the version built for people carrying $1 million to $10 million-plus in investable assets). Here’s the framework, rung by rung.

Rung One: An LLC Sized to Your Equity, Not Your Ego

If you own rental property directly, there are two kinds of liability to separate. Inside liability is what happens inside the property itself: a slip and fall, a fire, a construction accident. Outside liability is what follows you personally (a car accident, a malpractice judgment) and tries to reach into the LLC to take the equity.

A properly formed LLC protects you from both directions. But you don’t need a new LLC for every $50,000 deal. Doug’s rule of thumb: somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000 of equity is comfortable inside a single LLC. Insurance is still your first line of defense (it covers roughly 95% of what goes wrong), and the LLC picks up what insurance doesn’t.

One nuance most people get wrong: use an LLC formed in the state where the property actually sits. A Wyoming LLC that owns a California rental still gets treated as a California LLC by a California court. You don’t get Wyoming’s protections just because that’s where you filed the paperwork.

Rung Two: A Holding Company Once You Have More Than One

Once you have a handful of these property-level LLCs, you stack them under a holding company (Doug calls his version an Asset Management Limited Partnership, or AMLP). Jurisdiction matters more here: Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Delaware, and Alaska all have statutory frameworks worth using at this level, since the holding company isn’t doing business directly in any single state.

Keep the property-level LLCs single-member, owned by the holding company. That keeps them disregarded for tax purposes, so you’re not paying your accountant to file a separate return for every LLC you own.

Rung Three: If You’re a Passive LP, You May Already Be Protected

Here’s the part that changed how I think about my own portfolio. If you’re a limited partner in a syndication, your LP interest is already a securitized, limited-liability instrument. You don’t need to wrap it in another LLC. You can lose your investment if the deal goes bad, but you are not personally on the hook for the syndication’s liabilities.

That’s one more reason, on top of the time and lifestyle savings I talk about constantly, that I’ve moved so much of my own portfolio (and encouraged so many investors I work with) away from owning small rental properties directly and into being a passive LP instead. You’ll still want everything organized under a holding company for estate planning and bookkeeping purposes, but from a pure liability standpoint, a well-structured LP position is already close to bulletproof.

Rung Four: The Trust, Once You Cross Roughly $2 Million

Below about $2 million in assets, the LLC and holding company structure above is usually enough. Above that, Doug adds an asset protection trust, and there are three real options, not one:

  • A fully foreign trust (Cook Islands and similar jurisdictions) offers the strongest protection, since those jurisdictions won’t recognize a US judgment. It also costs $40,000 to $50,000 to set up and $10,000 to $15,000 a year to maintain, plus IRS compliance (Form 3520).
  • A domestic asset protection trust is cheaper, but the case law behind it is thin, and you’re still fully subject to US courts.
  • A bridge trust is the hybrid Doug uses for most clients: registered offshore with a standby foreign trustee, but structured to qualify as a domestic trust under the tax code. It runs around $3,500 a year, skips the foreign compliance headaches, and can convert into a fully foreign trust if you ever genuinely need that level of protection.

By his numbers, that top-tier foreign trust is truly necessary for maybe 1% of clients. For the other 99%, the bridge trust does the job.

The Numbers That Make This Real

If you’re wondering whether any of this matters at your net worth level, here’s the settlement dynamic Doug described: when a plaintiff’s attorney is deciding whether to accept an insurance settlement or push for a bigger judgment, they typically ask for a personal financial disclosure first. If that disclosure shows a $4 million brokerage account and $1.5 million in syndications sitting in your own name, they push harder. If it shows those same assets held inside a properly structured entity and trust, they usually take the insurance settlement and move on. Doug estimates that’s the outcome roughly 90% of the time when insurance is involved.

A few other pieces worth knowing where they fit:

  • Your primary residence usually should NOT go into the holding company. It belongs in your personal name or, if you’re in a state with weak homestead protection, in the trust itself, so you keep the tax-free capital gain, the mortgage interest deduction, and the homestead exemption. Florida protects an unlimited amount of home equity, and that protection is written into the state constitution. Hawaii’s homestead exemption tops out around $30,000, which changes the calculus if you live here.
  • The federal estate and gift tax exemption sits at $15 million per person for 2026 ($30 million for a married couple), so most people reading this aren’t up against that ceiling yet, but it’s worth knowing where it sits if you’re layering meaningful life insurance into this structure.
  • This has to be built before you have a problem. Moving assets after you’ve already been sued can be unwound by a court as a fraudulent transfer.

Why I’m Sharing This

I’m not an attorney, and none of this is legal advice for your specific situation. But after almost losing sleep over a dozen unprotected rentals early in my career, I wanted to lay out the actual framework a top asset protection attorney uses, in plain language, so you know what questions to ask before you’re the one getting sued.

If you want to go deeper on building your own portfolio the way I’ve structured mine, moving out of the landlord seat and into passive LP positions with the protection already built in, join our community at thewealthelevator.com/club.