About 16 states now have laws that allow a Domestic Asset Protection Trust (DAPT). These trusts can be very useful to protect assets in many situations.

But keep in mind that a DAPT (like other asset protection strategies) is designed to protect your assets and keep you out of bankruptcy. It may be less useful if you actually file for bankruptcy.

§548(e) of the Bankruptcy Code gives a bankruptcy trustee the right to challenge a conveyance made to a DAPT within ten years of the time it is made. That is a long time. Outside of bankruptcy, a creditor would likely have nowhere near that amount of time to challenge a conveyance as being fraudulent. Moreover, a bankruptcy trustee may have a lot more power and resources to challenge alleged fraudulent conveyances than many creditors would.

So this is just a reminder that a DAPT may be significantly more vulnerable to an attack by a bankruptcy trustee than by a creditor outside of a bankruptcy situation. This is also a reminder to document transfers to a DAPT (with evidence of your solvency at time of transfer) in case the transfer is later attacked as being "fraudulent".