Primary residence in Florida is shielded from bankruptcy and creditors. Also retirement accounts (both IRAs and 401ks). Lease your expensive ride and you’re mostly judgement proof.
Probably, it is not uncommon for people to dump large sums of money into renovations to their property before a bankruptcy.
Although I would imagine if it was very egregious, like $1m toilets when essentially no one else has anything reasonably close to that, that a judge would probably strike that down and require you to liquidate it.
Now I'm wondering if people retire in Florida to avoid retirement accounts and residences from being reclaimed during bankruptcy. Sounds like a great recipe for scam artists, TBH.
People retire in Florida because it's warm and there's no state income tax to double dip on your investment or other income. Great creditor protections is a second order effect.
So what? Bankruptcy courts weren't born yesterday; I'm sure they're familiar with that problem. And Google has reasonably strong incentives to collect as much of that $180M as they can, too.