Nevis LLC vs. Wyoming LLC: Asset Protection Comparison

If you spend ten minutes on YouTube searching for “asset protection,” you will inevitably find a guru selling you a Wyoming LLC.

The pitch is seductive: “It’s anonymous, it costs $100, and it has the same laws as offshore.”

I can tell you that this is half-true. Wyoming does have excellent statutes—on paper. But statutes do not exist in a vacuum; they exist within the United States legal system.

The difference between a Wyoming LLC and a Nevis LLC is not just about price or privacy. It is about jurisdiction.

When you are sued in the United States, a Wyoming LLC is a speed bump. A Nevis LLC is a border wall. To understand why, you have to look past the marketing brochures and look at the one document that Wyoming cannot override: the U.S. Constitution.

Why Wyoming LLCs Can Fail

The fundamental weakness of any domestic asset protection tool—whether it’s a Wyoming LLC, a Delaware LLC, or a Nevada Asset Protection Trust—is found in Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

This is the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

It states that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.”

The Litigation Scenario

Here is how this plays out in real life:

Suppose you live in California. You get sued in California. You lose.

The California judge issues a judgment against you for $2 million.

The creditor discovers you hold assets inside a Wyoming LLC. They take that California judgment to a Wyoming court and ask the Wyoming judge to enforce it.

The Wyoming Judge’s Dilemma

The Wyoming judge might hate the California creditor. The Wyoming judge might want to protect your LLC. But the Wyoming judge has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Wyoming judge is constitutionally required to respect the California judgment. If the California judge orders you to turn over your membership interest, or orders a receiver to take control of your assets, the Wyoming courts are often powerless to stop it.

It may even be easier for the creditor than that. The creditor could get the California court to order you to take actions against the LLC property. Or even allow foreclosure of your Wyoming LLC interest in California.

Nevis Difference

Nevis is not a U.S. state. It is a sovereign nation.

The High Court of Nevis does not care what a judge in California, New York, or Texas thinks. They are not bound by the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

If a creditor shows up in Nevis with a U.S. judgment, the Nevis judge will effectively say: “That is a nice piece of paper, but it has no power here. If you want this money, you have to sue the debtor again, in our court, under our laws.”

This forces the creditor to start the entire lawsuit over from scratch, thousands of miles away, without their U.S. lawyers. That hurdle alone is often enough to force a settlement.

Bond Requirements

If a creditor gets a judgment against you in the U.S., they can register that judgment in Wyoming for a nominal filing fee (often under $100). Once registered, the Wyoming court treats it as its own.

In Nevis, the barrier to entry is financial.

Under the Nevis Limited Liability Company Ordinance 2017, a creditor wishing to sue a Nevis LLC manager or member must first post a cash bond with the High Court to cover the defendant’s legal fees.

The statute explicitly requires a $100,000 bond (or more, at the court’s discretion).

Nevis follows the “English Rule” of litigation, meaning the loser pays the winner’s legal fees. If the creditor loses, that $100,000 is gone.

This effectively eliminates contingency fee lawyers. No plaintiff’s attorney will post $100,000 of their own money to chase a “maybe.”

Furthermore, the standard of proof for fraudulent transfer in Nevis is “beyond a reasonable doubt” (the criminal standard), not the “preponderance of the evidence” (civil standard) used in Wyoming.

Single-Member LLCs: The Olmstead Risk

The most dangerous asset protection advice on the internet is that “Single-Member LLCs are safe in the U.S.”

In 2010, the Florida Supreme Court shattered this illusion in the landmark case Olmstead v. FTC. The court ruled that because a single-member LLC has no other partners to protect, the charging order protection does not apply. The judge ordered the debtor to surrender his membership interest entirely, allowing the FTC to seize the assets inside.

While Wyoming statutes claim to protect single-member LLCs, this protection has never been fully stress-tested against a federal agency or an aggressive “alter ego” attack in a bankruptcy court.

Nevis law was specifically amended to close the Olmstead loophole. The Ordinance explicitly states that the charging order is the exclusive remedy for all LLCs, including single-member LLCs. Even if you are the sole owner and manager, a Nevis judge is statutorily forbidden from ordering you to surrender the company shares.

Charging Order Protection

Both Wyoming and Nevis statutes declare that a charging order (a lien on distributions) is the exclusive remedy for creditors. This means the creditor cannot take your business; they can only wait for distributions that you, as the manager, never send.

However, in the U.S., the term “exclusive” is handled differently.”

Wyoming

U.S. judges have broad equitable powers. If a judge believes you are using the Wyoming LLC solely to stiff a creditor, they can bypass the charging order limitation using theories like reverse veil piercing, alter ego analysis, or even civil contempt.

Nevis

Nevis courts do not have the same equitable leeway to ignore their own statutes. The charging order is strictly enforced as the only option.

How a Creditor Can Still Seize an Offshore LLC

While Nevis law is clear that a charging order is the exclusive remedy for collection, U.S. judges and creditors are creative. If they cannot attack the LLC directly, they attack your ownership of it.

The most famous example of this is Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Barber, 85 F. Supp. 3d 1308 (M.D. Fla. 2015).

In this case, the debtor (Barber) owned a single-member Nevis LLC. He argued that because the LLC was in Nevis, the Florida court could not touch it. The court disagreed.

The judge ruled that an interest in an LLC is “intangible personal property.” Under standard legal principles, intangible property is located where the owner lives. Since Barber lived in Florida, the court ruled that his membership interest was a Florida asset, subject to US jurisdiction.

The court ordered the foreclosure of Barber’s membership interest.

The case demonstrates that if you personally own a single-member Nevis LLC, a US judge may try to seize the membership interest itself, bypassing Nevis law entirely.

Solution: Trust-Owned Nevis LLC

This is why we rarely recommend a standalone Nevis LLC for high-net-worth clients. To defeat the Barber risk, we combine the Nevis LLC with a Cook Islands trust.

When using a Cook Islands trust, you do not own the Nevis LLC. The Cook Islands Trust owns 100% of the LLC.

Since the trustee owner is located in the Cook Islands, the membership interest is legally located in the Cook Islands, outside the jurisdiction of the US courts.

If a creditor tries to replicate the Barber ruling, they fail. They cannot order the foreclosure of the membership interest because they have no jurisdiction over the Cook Islands trustee.

By placing the LLC inside the trust, you get the best of both worlds: the operational flexibility of the Nevis LLC and the protection of the Cook Islands trust.

Here is the Cost Comparison section.

I have written this to be more than just a price list. It uses the “Alper Law” framing: Price vs. Value. It explains that Wyoming is “cheap” because it offers a commodity (filing), while Nevis is “expensive” because it offers a product (sovereignty).

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Cost Comparison

When clients look at the price tag of a Nevis LLC versus a Wyoming LLC, they often balk: “Why should I pay $3,000 for a Nevis LLC when I can get a Wyoming LLC for $100?”

The answer is that you are not paying for the paperwork; you are paying for the barrier to entry.

The Cost to Maintain vs. Cost to Break

To understand the real value, you have to look at two different ledgers: what it costs you to maintain the structure, and what it costs your creditor to break it.

	Wyoming LLC	Nevis LLC
Initial Setup Cost	$100 – $300 (State filing fee + Registered Agent)	$10,000 – $15,000 (Legal fees, Due Diligence, Registration)
Annual Maintenance	~$60 / year (Annual Report fee)	~$750 – $1,500 / year (Gov. renewal + Registered Agent)
Privacy Cost	Free (Nominee services are cheap)	Included (Privacy is statutory)
Cost for Creditor to Sue	~$100 (Filing fee to register foreign judgment)	$100,000 + (Cash Bond + Local Counsel Retainer)

In Wyoming, you save thousands upfront. However, if you are sued, the plaintiff can domesticate the judgment in Wyoming for the price of a nice dinner ($100). Your savings evaporate the moment a lawsuit is filed.

For Nevis LLCs, you pay a premium of around $1,000 per year. In exchange, you get an insurance policy against frivolous litigation. When a creditor realizes they must post a $100,000 cash bond just to start the conversation, they may walk away. More so if the Nevis LLC is owned by a Cook Islands trust.

My Advice: if you are protecting a $50,000 dropshipping business, use Wyoming. The cost of Nevis eats into your margin too much. If you are protecting $1 million in liquid assets, using Wyoming is malpractice. Saving $1,500 a year to expose $1 million to U.S. jurisdiction is a bad bet.