Juries handed down nearly 200 verdicts of $10 million or more against companies in 2025, a record count according to Marathon Strategies. The awards totaled more than $25.6 billion, a 40.7% increase over 2024. Fraud is climbing as well, with $20.9 billion in losses reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center last year, up 26% from 2024.

Plenty of wealthy households still carry liability protection sized for a much smaller life. A Chubb survey of 1,000 North Americans with at least $1.5 million in investable assets found that 81% don’t carry excess liability insurance, and 78% of those who do hold policies of $3 million or less.

Michael Gold, founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, has seen what that gap can cost. “The wealthy often underestimate their exposure,” he writes in his forthcoming book, The Goldprint, “and overestimate their protection.” He points to “an alarming rise in coordinated fraud, cybercrime, and litigation targeting entrepreneurs, executives, and public figures,” and he puts the rule simply: “the bigger your success, the bigger your target.”

A $5 Million Lesson

The case Gold can’t shake started about 15 years ago. A company owned by two partners was sold in a deal worth roughly $25 million to each of them. One became Gold’s client. The other liked Gold’s approach, calling it “wealth management with intention,” but he had promised his account to a college roommate who worked as a financial advisor at one of the big wirehouses.

Years later, with the second partner’s net worth above $30 million, his 17-year-old daughter was in a serious accident while driving one of his cars under the influence. Everyone survived, but the injuries were severe, and the lawsuits were aimed at the father, whose car she was driving and whose name was on the insurance.

His auto policy capped at $250,000. His $1 million umbrella policy kicked in only after $500,000 of auto coverage. The lawsuit was for $5 million, which left him on the hook for nearly $3.75 million out of pocket. A chunk of his portfolio had to be sold to cover the settlement.

No one had ever run a true risk audit or stress-tested his plan, Michael Gold writes. The investor was “under-protected,” in Gold’s words. A properly structured umbrella policy, aligned with his net worth and risk profile, “would have covered the gap for a fraction of what he ultimately lost.” Losses like that, Gold writes, “come from bad planning.”

Coverage Frozen at an Old Net Worth

Umbrella insurance sits on top of home and auto policies and responds to the claims nobody plans for. The Goldprint lists “auto accidents, personal injury claims, defamation, even liabilities from your children’s actions or household staff.” Those exposures expand as a family adds drivers, homes and staff, and the Chubb numbers show how often coverage stays thin.

At Gold’s Westport practice, that review is built into the financial plan itself. “We need to really understand the client’s business, their family, what’s going on on their net worth statement, their risk management, their kids, their professional, all the things. And then we could see what gaps exist,” Michael Gold says (Interview).

The wirehouse advisor in his story, by contrast, “never looked past the portfolio,” Gold writes.

Building a Structure That Deters

The goal of asset protection, as Gold describes it, is deterrence. He wants assets organized “so clearly, so intentionally, that potential litigants see immediately: this fortress is not worth attacking.”

The Goldprint sets out five principles for getting there, starting with “visibility as deterrence.” The others call for insulation against frivolous and opportunistic claims, plans that are actually implemented, advice matched to each family’s risk profile, and coverage that is complete without being excessive. On implementation, he writes, “Too many ‘plans’ live in binders and gather dust.”

Radical Ownership, the white paper Gold co-authored with Jerry D. Prince, poses an annual question that fits liability coverage almost perfectly: “Which decision will become harder, more expensive, or impossible if I wait?” A coverage review before a claim costs a premium. After the claim, the bill is the judgment.

Risk management, the Westport advisor writes, is “the discipline of honoring what you’ve built by protecting it.”

Contact information:

Gold Family Wealth

257 Riverside Ave., 1st Floor

Westport, CT 06880

646-844-2533

Investment advisory services offered through CWM, LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor.