From Yellowstone to Cumbria: Making asset protection a priority

Associate solicitor in our private client team, Winter Addis shares her thoughts on the hit TV series Yellowstone and how it makes us explore the challenges of asset protection.

Protecting what's important

I have just finished watching Yellowstone. Apart from having ordered cowboy boots and denim jackets, the programme has left me with a feeling of unease, questioning my own morality. Examining our ethics is part of what makes us human of course, but so is the want to protect our assets and preserve them for future generations.

In Yellowstone, the Dutton family fights to protect their land over decades, successfully and painfully keeping the land in the family, at huge personal costs.  

Preserving land for future generations

The programme is set in Montana, but I cannot help but draw parallels to our own landscape here in Cumbria. And albeit on a different scale, the finite resource of land and space, which brings thousands of visitors to the place every year.

Landowners, wherever they are across the globe, inevitably face the challenges of protecting what is important to them. Yellowstone could have been sold many times, with one offer in excess of $400 million. But as many farmers and landowners will attest, it’s generally not about value but about protecting assets and land for future generations. In many ways, value is irrelevant.

Why expert legal advice is key

Cumbria isn't a frontier, and there aren't any cowboys here, but farmers and landowners will always be under pressure to give up or sell land. Protecting land and wealth is not a new idea and long predates even the American pioneers.    

So it's nothing new, but changes in political policy and law keep putting asset protection back at the top of our agenda. Whether that be warnings about stock exchange variables with the Trump administration in full swing or on our own domestic front, with the changes to inheritance tax introduced by the Labour Party.

Protecting assets nowadays usually involves the input of a multidisciplinary team made up of accountants, lawyers, surveyors, etc and detailed estate planning, and careful document drafting.  

Of course, we’re not talking about the Wild West and gunfights, but arming yourself (with a good solicitor) is still the best way to secure your assets for the future.

For support with asset protection, contact Muckle's private client experts using 0191 211 7777