Found it! The letter was sent to me in 2003 by a Gold Coast Lawyer.
The procedure is as YH2000 had stated, and the followings are mostly copied or summarised from the letter:
You set up a trust with yourself as the trustee(or setup a company as a trustee)
You gift an amount of capital equal to the equity you have in your home and an other investment assets wich are in your name. The gift should not exceed your equity n these assets asthat could make ou insolvent.
Your trust then loan the amount back to you, with a loan document, a mortgage and possibly, other security to guarantee repayment. (no interest would be payable and no repayment would be made unless demanded by the trustee)
The setup has to be in place at least for 2 years before effective against a bankruptcy claim.
And as unsecured creditors rank second to secured creditors,if your home was sold by a trustee in bankruptcy, the proceeds would go to the secured creditors first.
Interestingly, according to the letter, this "Family Protection-Beta Strategy" is patented!
The letter went on to suggest that to put off paying the stamp duty on the mortgage by postponing registering the mortgage untill a claim is actually made against you. I am not sure whether this is a good idea, as if there is an existing mortgage on your home, it will act as a deterrent to litigation as the potetial reward has disappeared.
I myself do not think this is necessary a good strategy, depending on each indivdual's circumstances of course.
1) to start off with the PPOR has to be unencumberred by the sound of it, and it would be difficult or at least more complicated to asses the equity in your home for investment purposes...etc.
2) stamp duty involved can be somewhat costly
3) trust structure is not necessary a bad thing as it offers many other benefits but I think it can be ultilized differently and more effectively. (possibly cross-securitization?)
4) probably not suitable for IP as most of them would already be heavily mortgaged anyway.
5) yes, you probably need a seperate RM for each property but for the reason stated above, you probably would not want to do it for each property anyway unless you have 10 unencumbered properties all sitting there!
Those are my thoughts on the matter anyway, and please comment if I am wrong as I am myself very much a beginner on this matter of asset protection.
Cheers
Kwan
PS: Cross-securitizing involves using your existing loan in your trust. You ask the bank to overstamp the mortgage security held to include all the equity in your privately named properties. So a search done on your personal asset would shows that all your asset have been mortgaged to the hilt and it would be fruitless to sue you.
Link to previous discussion on Cross-Securitizing. wbthom has shed some light on the subject:
http://www.somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18860