Most of us will never get sued. Still, it’s worth looking at ways to protect assets in case a judge someday throws the gavel at you.

Good insurance is the first step. For instance, I pay $151 per year for a $1 million all-perils liability policy on top of my auto and homeowners coverage. It’s peace of mind on the cheap.

Beyond that, understanding asset protection requires us to crawl into the legal weeds with lawyers.

Joseph Cordell makes his living helping guys hang on to stuff - their bank accounts, pension plans, great chunks of their paychecks. Their kids.

“We’ve been protecting guys’ assets from arguably the greatest menace that might exist out there,” he says.

Cordell means their wives.

He’s senior partner at Cordell and Cordell, a big divorce law firm based near Westport, and its clients are exclusively men.

Now he’s expanding the practice to help guys protect themselves from other threats - namely lawyers waving judgments.

Ironically, your marriage license affords some round-about protection, says Cordell. Most marrieds have their money in joint accounts, and their homes are in both names. In Missouri these assets are presumed to be held as “tenants in the entirety.”

Here’s the upshot: Someone with a judgment against just one spouse generally can’t get their hands on such jointly owned property.

This is great news for people like my wife, Susie, who married a klutz. If either of us is ever sued, it will be me.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for accounts held jointly between non-spouses. For instance, estate attorney Janet Bandera had an elderly Missouri client who put her son on her bank account. A creditor in California hear about it and tried to seize the entire account.

Bandera fended it off by proving that the money belonged to the old woman, not the son. “But it took two emergency hearings and lots of lawyers’ fees,” said Bandera, who is senior vice president at National Advisers Trust and head of Moneta Trust operations in Clayton.

The spousal protection is much weaker in Illinois. There, homes can be held as tenants in the entirety, but bank accounts are generally held as “joint tenants,” says Richard Coffee, a Cordell lawyer in Belleville. It’s easier for judgment holders to get their mitts on it.

Most retirement accounts, such as pensions, 401(k)s and IRAs are exempt from civil judgments, says lawyer Coffee. But such plans can goof and create legal exceptions that let creditors sneak in. Retirement plans are fair game in divorce.

Risks increase if you own a little business. As a sole proprietor, a suit against the business puts your personal wealth at risk. Someone slips on a banana peel, and there goes your bank account.

That’s why lawyers recommend that you incorporate. A “limited liability” or Sub S corporation provides reasonable protection. If your corporation defaults in a debt, the creditor can come after the business’ assets, but not your house. Ditto with the banana peel.

There are exceptions. If you personally deliberately placed the banana peel on the floor, expect to be sued personally. Employment actions, such as a sexual harassment suit, can also put you personally at risk.

An LLC or Sub S generally won’t subject you to the corporate tax rate. The profits flow through to you, and you pay at your personal tax rate.

For people at high risk of law suit, Cordell likes irrevocable trusts as protection. You create the trust, put your assets in it, and name a trustee to take charge of it. “You don’t own the asset anymore. You can forget the idea of being sued for it,” says Cordell.

You can receive benefits of the trust while you live, and pass it on to your heirs. The downside is that you lose full control of the assets. And it can’t be revoked.

It has to be set up properly to avoid a challenge, says Cordell, and you can’t wait until you’re being sued. “It’s better for someone who sees that there may be bad weather ahead but does not see dark clouds, much less rain coming down,” said Cordell. Most small business owners should consider it, he says.

Source

After months of stop-and-start negotiations, St. Louis University and Des Peres hospitals have reached a new 4-year agreement with HealthLink Inc. and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Missouri.

The deal ends the uncertainty for thousands of St. Louis area patients, especially some of those undergoing cancer and transplant patients on long-term treatment protocols who worried about whether they would be able to continue their treatments at SLU Hospital - or would need to be transferred to another hospital.

The managed care contract sets medical reimbursement rates and terms of service between the health insurers and the two hospitals, which are both owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Dallas.

Under the agreement, Anthem and HealthLink members will continue to receive “in-network” insurance coverage for the medical care they receive at SLU Hospital, Des Peres Hospital, and related outpatient facilities.

“We’re happy that we have a new contract and patients can receive uninterrupted care,” said Tenet spokeswoman Carol Britton.

Without the contracts, Anthem and HealthLink customers would have paid significantly higher rates this year for out-of-network care at the two hospitals - and higher health costs would no doubt have triggered a flurry of patients fleeing to other medical providers.

About 43 percent of SLU Hospital’s managed care business is covered by either the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan or the HealthLink plan, according to the hospital. But it’s unclear how many thousands of patient visits per year that represents.

The agreement caps a simmering feud between Tenet and Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., which is the parent of HealthLink and a licensee for Anthem and Blue Cross health plans in 14 states including Missouri.

“We are pleased to continue our relationship with Tenet,” Steve Martenet, president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Missouri, said in a written statement issued Wednesday afternoon. “As the state’s largest health benefits provider, we strive to create the best health care value for our customers through a broad network of quality health care providers.”

According to WellPoint, about 1.2 million Missouri residents receive health coverage from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield and HealthLink plans. But only a small portion of those patients routinely visit SLU Hospital or Des Peres Hospital.

STICKING POINTS

Tenet officials said their negotiators had offered an initial contract proposal last summer, but made little progress with the insurers in the fall.

In early December, SLU and Des Peres hospitals had announced that, because of a breakdown in talks, they would cancel their managed care contracts with Anthem and HealthLink as of Jan. 1. However, patients covered by the Anthem contract would have continued to receive care at in-network rates until Feb. 22.

Key sticking points in the talks, Tenet’s Britton said, included the reimbursement rates for medical services, including such procedures as surgical implants quick payday loans. The negotiators dickered on specific rates and methodologies, doing financial analyses on major aspects of the deal.

Britton said the new agreement includes a “single-digit increase” for the contractual rates of reimbursement for Tenet’s hospital services.

Tenet Healthcare negotiators insisted that the agreement cover all of Tenet’s outpatient facilities that are affiliated with SLU and Des Peres hospitals, as well as all of Tenet’s employed physicians - demands that Anthem agreed to.

Britton said the agreement also calls for insurance coverage for “all high-end services” at SLU Hospital, including organ transplants, neurosurgery, Level I trauma care, and orthopedic surgery.

SLUCare Physicians were not affected by these contract talks. They remain in-network under their existing agreement with Anthem.

Anthem and Tenet negotiators struck their deal late Tuesday evening, and finalized remaining details on Wednesday.

Laura Keller, a spokeswoman for SLU Hospital, said the Anthem insurance coverage renewal is effective March 1, and the HealthLink renewal is retroactive to Jan. 1.

“This has been really difficult,” she said. “Our determination to get this agreement signed was for all the patients who require the level of care we provide.”

HARD BARGAINING

Britton said the sluggish economy played into the difficulty of the talks.

“I think everybody is tightening up a bit,” she said. “They’re trying to save money. We’re trying to make some money.”

WellPoint companies have also earned the reputation of driving hard bargains in their contract talks. In the last year or so, Anthem Blue Cross companies have engaged in numerous publicly reported contract disputes with hospitals and medical groups in California, Missouri, and other states, according to news reports.

During the holidays, the two sides stopped talking - and both blamed the impasse on the other. Anthem officials said the hospitals were demanding “substantial rate increases,” and Tenet officials countered that Anthem’s reimbursement rates were as much as 25 percent lower than the average rates paid by SLU Hospital’s other managed care insurers.

In recent weeks, Tenet and WellPoint representatives exchanged contract proposals and counterproposals. Both sides met last month at a health conference in Boston, and the talks began to intensify. The negotiators spoke mainly on the phone, sent documents back and forth, and arranged a few face-to-face meetings.

“We had a hard time getting them to the table,” Britton said, “but once we (did) we were able to work out an agreement. … I think we are satisfied with it. We got enough of what we wanted to sign the deal.”

Source

The holiday quarter is crucial for toy makers, who can make up to half of annual sales during the period.

The No. 1 U.S. toy maker reported Tuesday that its net income rose to $370.6 million, or $1.07 per share, for the period ended Dec. 31. That’s up from $325.2 million, or 89 cents per share, a year ago.

This beat the $1 per share that analysts polled by FactSet expected Business Card Holders.

Revenue edged up 1 percent to $2.15 billion, but missed Wall Street’s $2.22 billion.

Mattel, based in El Segundo, Calif., is also raising its annual dividend by 35 percent. The company says its acquisition of HIT Entertainment is expected to close on Wednesday.

Source

Premier Lucas Papademos released a statement after Sunday’s meeting, saying he and the party leaders were in “complete agreement” over the positions to adopt in subsequent talks toward a euro130 billion ($170 billion) bailout for Greece and a bond swap agreement with private creditors.

While talks with private creditors appear to be on the right track, Papademos concedes in his statement that “deviations” from agreed targets and “delays that are piling up” have led the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to ask for additional, painful austerity measures.

Source

Spokeswoman Deb MacLean told The Associated Press on Friday the man had been released. She declined to offer any other information.

Police previously said the attack happened in Warri, the capital of Delta state. The police said the assailants trailed the man to a bank and waited outside before kidnapping him.

The attack occurred in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta, where foreign firms have pumped oil out of the country for more than 50 years. Despite the billions flowing into Nigeria’s government, many in the delta remain desperately poor, living in polluted waters without access to proper medical care, education or work.

Source

When the tower opens next year, visitors to the observation deck will see helicopters fly by at eye level and take in the metropolis all the way to the distant north Downs Hills. The structure designed by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano dwarfs nearby landmarks like Tower Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral across the Thames.

The ambitious project speaks of now faded boom times: 1.5 billion pound ($2.34 billion) price tag, fancy restaurants, corporate office space, posh hotel. But it is being completed as Britain and Europe totter on the brink of recession _ and the Shard will loom over a city in decline.

Neighbors are hoping the dramatic tower, visible from most parts of London, will bring big spenders to its south-of-the-river location, for centuries the less prosperous side of the Thames.

“I like the design, I like the promise. I think it’s going to blast this neighborhood out of the water,” said Cherille McNeil-Halward, 71, who runs a picture framing shop a few minutes away from the Shard. “This tower will bring people with money to spend here, and that’s got to be a good thing.”

There is no question that the Shard is a riveting addition to the traditionally low-rise London skyline. But some complain it dominates the view, obscuring sights such as St. Paul’s impressive dome.

The developer Irvine Sellar sees the project as a symbol of London’s status as a world city. The 72-floor, 310 meter- (1,016 foot-) tall building is designed by an Italian, financed by the Qatar government, and the Chinese hotel group Shangri-La were the first tenants to sign up.

“We want this building to be a building Londoners will feel ownership of,” said Sellar. “You can eat there, you can work there, you can sleep there. And you can see the view from there.”

The building’s exterior will be finished in June but it is unlikely to open until early next year. It will open in a truly historic neighborhood, close to the Tower of London, Shakespeare’s Globe, and Borough Market.

In fact, the ultra-modern Shard sits at the edge of ancient London. The first Roman settlement Londinium was nearby on the banks of the Thames. Charles Dickens’ “Little Dorrit” was set in the streets behind the Shard.

The developers conceived the project more than 11 years ago when there was a financial appetite for building tall low interest rate personal loans. But it generated almost immediate opposition from conservation groups who didn’t want the fabric of the city changed.

English Heritage and other groups complained that the design did not fit in with the surrounding architecture, but were overruled.

Prince Charles, who has waged a passionate campaign against modern architecture, wryly referred to the Shard as “an enormous salt cellar” shortly after it won planning permission but has not formally tried to block the project.

Last year UNESCO said it is reviewing the status of the Tower of London as a World Heritage Site, partly because of the way the Shard and other buildings loom over its courtyard.

The future of the building is still not secure. Along with Shangri-La, some restaurants have signed leases, Sellar said, but most of the office space has not yet been rented at a time when many London-based businesses are striving to reduce costs.

A report by Barclays Capital published this month finds a correlation between the construction of skyscrapers and financial crises, concluding that ambitious building projects often open just as the economy declines.

It cites the economic and oil crises of the early 1970s, which coincided with the completion of the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago. In Malaysia the building of the Petronas Towers coincided with the Asian economic crisis on 1997. And in Dubai the Burj Khalifa _ the world’s tallest building _ went up as the emirate almost went bust.

The Shard itself was hit by the credit crunch. Sellar secured funding from investment bank Credit Suisse in 2008, but the bank pulled out after Lehman Brothers crashed in September of that year. Eventually the central bank of Qatar stepped in to finance the project.

Other tall buildings have been built in recent years as London has become a more vertical city _ including Norman Foster’s famous “Gherkin.” But the Shard dominates them all, and is likely to become a prominent symbol of London.

“You are going to see this building from everywhere in the city,” said Jonathan Glancey, architecture critic at The Guardian newspaper. “It is going be the building that says `this is London,’ and the message it is going to send is that London is brash, shiny and pretty bling.”

Source

The RIM founders have been replaced by Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG, RIM said Sunday.

The Canadian company turned the email smartphone into a ubiquitous device that many could not live without, but U.S. users have moved on to flashier touch-screen phones such as Apple’s iPhone and various competing models that run Google’s Android software. RIM has suffered a series of setbacks and has lost tens of billions in market value.

RIM said last month that new phones deemed critical to the company’s future would be delayed until late this year. And its PlayBook tablet, RIM’s answer to the Apple iPad, failed to gain consumer support, forcing the company to deeply discount it to move the devices off store shelves.

Many shareholders and analysts have said a change or sale of the company has been needed, but the sudden departure of the two founders from their top jobs wasn’t expected despite their promises that they would examine the co-CEO and co-chairmen structure.

Balsillie and Lazaridis have long been celebrated as Canadian heroes, even appearing in the country’s citizenship guide for new immigrants as models of success. They headed Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM together for the past two decades.

“There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now,” Lazaridis said in a statement.

Lazaridis will take on a new role as vice chairman of RIM’s board and chairman of the board’s new innovation committee. Balsillie remains a member of the board.

The two remain two of RIM’s biggest shareholders.

“I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company,” Balsillie said in the statement. “I remain a significant shareholder and a director and, of course, they will have my full support.”

Analysts have said RIM’s future depends on its much-delayed new software platform as RIM has tried and failed to reinvigorate the BlackBerry. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in late 2010 that RIM would have a hard time catching up to Apple because RIM has been forced to move beyond its area of strength and into unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company.

Heins, 54, said Lazaridis and Balsillie took RIM in the right direction and said he’s committed to the new software.

“We are more confident than ever that was the right path. It is Mike and Jim’s continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today. I share that philosophy and am very excited about the company’s future,” Heins said.

Barbara Stymiest, a former chief operating officer of the Royal Bank of Canada who has been a member of RIM’s board since 2007, has named chair of the board of directors. RIM also announced that Prem Watsa, the chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings, is a new board member. Watsa has become a significant shareholder.

Lazaridis said he was so confident in the future direction of the company that he intends to purchase an additional $50 million of the company’s shares on the open market.

RIM was worth more than $70 billion a few years ago but now has a market value of $8.9 billion.

The company still has 75 million active subscribers, but many analysts believe RIM will lose market share internationally as it has in the U.S. Market researcher NPD Group said RIM’s market share of smartphones in the U.S. declined from 44 percent in 2009 to 10 percent in 2011.

Balsillie acknowledged in December that the last few quarters have been among the most challenging times in the company’s history.

Source

However, crews began combing the area above the waterline in the evening after officials determined the ship had stabilized enough, and they will evaluate the situation Saturday morning to see if the diving operation can resume, said Coast Guard spokesman Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro.

The diving operation focuses on an area where passengers would have sought lifeboats, Nicastro said.

“We are ready to go for the morning,” he said, as long as the partially submerged ship is not shifting.

The $450 million Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into well-charted rocks off the island of Giglio a week ago. Eleven people have been confirmed dead.

It was not clear if the slight movements registered by sensors placed on board the Costa Concordia were just vibrations as the ship settles on the rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio or if the massive ocean liner is slowly slipping off the reef.

The sensors detected that the ship’s bow was moving about 15 millimeters (half an inch) an hour and the stern about 7 millimeters (one-quarter inch) an hour, said Nicola Casagli of the University of Florence, who was called in by Italian authorities to monitor the ship’s stability.

The Concordia’s movements are being watched since any significant shift could be dangerous for divers trying to locate those missing since the Concordia ran aground Jan. 13. An additional fear is that movement could damage tanks holding a half-million gallons of fuel oil and lead to leaks.

The sea floor drops off sharply a few meters (yards) from where the ship is resting, and Italy’s environment minister has warned it risks sinking.

Capt. Francesco Schettino, who was jailed after he left the ship before everyone was safely evacuated, is under house arrest, facing possible charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship.

On Friday, relatives of some of the 21 missing were at Giglio’s port getting briefings from rescue teams.

Casagli told Sky TG24 that some movement in the Concordia was only natural given the immense weight of the steel-hulled ship, which is being held in place by two huge rocks at bow and stern.

But the latest movements indicate it isn’t stable, he said. “These are small, regular movements that are being monitored because they’re going in the same direction,” he told Sky.

Late Thursday, Costa-owner Carnival Corp. announced it was conducting a comprehensive audit of all 10 of its cruise lines to review safety and emergency response procedures in the wake of the Costa disaster. The evacuation was chaotic and the alarm to abandon the ship was sounded after the Concordia had capsized too much to get many life boats down.

____

Andrea Foa contributed from Giglio, Italy.

Source

Domnica Cemortan, who says she was translating Capt. Francesco Schettino’s orders during the frenzied evacuation, has emerged as a potential new witness in the investigation into the officer’s actions the night the ship ran aground.

Schettino is under house arrest, facing possible charges of manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing a shipwreck after he made an unauthorized detour from the programmed route that caused the vessel to slam into a reef and capsize off the Tuscan island of Giglio. At least 11 people were killed and 21 are missing.

Meanwhile, a new audiotape of the doomed vessel’s first communications with maritime authorities showed the ship’s officers continued to report only an electrical problem for more than 30 minutes after hitting the reef.

Attention has focused on Cemortan amid reports by crew and passengers that Schettino was seen eating dinner with a Russian-speaking woman at the time of the impact. The 25-year-old Cemortan speaks Russian and had worked as a hostess for the Italian cruise operator, although her contract had expired and she was vacationing with friends when she boarded the luxury liner hours before the Jan. 13 disaster.

“I saw him at the restaurant. He was with a blonde woman. He did not look drunk. They were just eating,” a Filipino cocktail waitress, Gladly Balderama, said of Schettino.

Another Filipino crew member, Roger Barsita, said he served Schettino and a woman dinner.

“I have no idea who she is,” he told The Associated Press in Manila. “Some of the waiters said she’s Russian.”

In interviews with Moldovan media, Cemortan said she was dining with “colleagues, so to speak” in the ship’s restaurant when the ship struck the reef. She said she was summoned to the bridge to translate instructions for passengers, particularly Russians, since she speaks several languages. Moldova is a former Soviet republic.

“All our colleagues made announcements in different languages because there was a problem with the electricity. It was very dark on the ship,” she told the Moldovan daily Adevarul. “I stayed on the bridge in case the captain needed me to make an announcement. There were about 20 more officers, cruise directors and the captain.”

She defended Schettino and crew members against criticism of a chaotic evacuation, saying they saved thousands of lives.

“He did a great thing. He saved over 3,000 lives,” she told Moldova’s Jurnal TV.

Prosecutor Francesco Verusio declined to comment on Italian media reports that Cemortan was being sought as a witness, citing the ongoing investigation.

Divers, meanwhile, were focusing on an evacuation route on the ship’s fourth level, now about 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface, where five bodies were found earlier this week, Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TG 24. Crews set off small explosions to blow holes into hard-to-reach areas for easier access by divers.

Seven of the dead were identified Thursday by authorities _ four French passengers, one Spanish and one Italian passenger and one Peruvian crew member. Italian passenger Giovanni Masia, who would have turned 86 next week, was buried in Sardinia.

Italian authorities have identified 32 people who have either died or are missing: two Americans, 12 Germans, seven Italians, six French, two Peruvians and one person each from Hungary, India and Spain.

Meanwhile, a new audiotape of the Concordia’s first contact with maritime authorities appeared to support allegations that the captain and other senior officers were slow to recognize the seriousness of the accident.

In the tape, which begins at 10:12 p.m., the port authority asks if everything is OK. A Concordia officer replies that the ship had experienced a blackout, even though it had hit the reef more than half an hour earlier.

Italian media reported the officer on the call was Schettino, but that could not be independently confirmed.

The port official tells the officer that a relative of a crew member had reported to police on the mainland that “during the dinner everything fell on his head” _ a reference to flying plates and glasses in the ship’s restaurant after the impact.

“No, negative, we have a blackout and we are verifying the conditions on board,” the response came. The port official then asked if passengers had suited up in life vests.

“I repeat, we are verifying the conditions of the blackout,” the officer said.

Passengers and crew members have faulted Schettino and other senior officers for failing to act quickly, delaying evacuation until the ship was listing too severely to lower many of the lifeboats.

“They asked us to make announcements to say that it was electrical problems and that our technicians were working on it and not to panic,” a French steward, Thibault Francois, told France-2 television. “I told myself, ‘This doesn’t sound good.’”

He said he eventually started escorting passengers to lifeboats on orders from his boss, not the captain. “No, there were no orders from the management,” he said.

An Indian waiter agreed.

“The emergency alarm was sounded very late,” only after the ship “started tilting and water started seeping in,” said Mukesh Kumar, who arrived home in New Delhi on Thursday.

Cemortan, however, defended the captain and crew.

“How dare they accuse us that we were incompetent when we saved 3,000 lives,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “Incompetent are the ones who have a poisonous tongue.”

Cemortan described heroic efforts by crew members to help passengers in a dark and listing ship.

“We were looking for them, searching for them,” she told Jurnal. “We heard them all crying, shouting in all languages.”

“I couldn’t see a thing, I could just hear how the ship was creaking and how heavy things were coming from above down to where the ship was leaning,” she wrote on Facebook.

She said Schettino stayed on deck at least until 11:50 p.m., when he ordered her into a lifeboat.

Late Thursday, Carnival Corp., which owns Italian operator Costa Crociere SpA, announced it was conducting a comprehensive audit of all 10 of its cruise lines to review safety and emergency response procedures in the wake of the Costa disaster.

In addition, the Miami-based company, the world’s largest cruise line, said it was conducting an outside review of the Concordia grounding itself.

Source