In personal injury cases, it’s common for the injured person’s creditors to have filed liens against settlement funds, often after having agreed with the injured person’s attorney to forebear from (delay) collecting debts until the settlement funds arrived.Ĭreditors who may place a lien on your settlement might include: A lien is a formal claim against specific property. Once the money has arrived in the trust account, the attorney typically uses it to pay any existing liens on your settlement. That’s a bank account the attorney maintains separate from the attorney’s business or personal accounts to hold client funds. When an attorney represents you in a settlement, the settlement money generally goes to the attorney’s trust account. Placing the Funds in an Attorney Trust Account But payers tend to prefer payment by the much slower means of a paper check, which takes a few days to arrive by mail and up to a week or so to clear (depending on the amount). Wire transfers are preferable for personal injury claimants, because they’re nearly instantaneous. The settlement agreement may also spell out how they send the payment. Payers, particularly insurance companies, prefer to hold on to their money as long as possible. Whatever the time period agreed, you can expect the payor to wait as long as possible. For instance, it can require the insurance company or at-fault party to pay the settlement amount immediately, or it might give them a window of time to pay after the settlement agreement has been executed. The settlement agreement may set terms for the timing of payment. Sending the Money by Check or Wire Transfer Instead, in most cases, the settlement only becomes final when it’s put into writing and signed by the parties or their representatives. In other words, your case doesn’t officially settle when your attorney and the other side agree to the terms of a settlement in a phone call by email. The obligation to pay settlement money usually arises only once a formal, written settlement agreement has been signed, sealed, and delivered. On average, you can expect these steps to take anywhere from two to six weeks to complete. Getting settlement money involves completing a series of relatively standard steps. Steps Involved in Receiving Settlement Money Settle a claim only when it offers the most favorable outcome you can realistically achieve. You usually can’t reopen them, even if it turns out later that you didn’t get enough money to cover your personal injury losses. No lawyer can agree to a settlement on your behalf without your permission. But the decision whether to settle a claim rests with the parties themselves. Lawyers usually negotiate settlements on behalf of the parties to the settlement agreement. The typical personal injury settlement consists of an agreement for the claimant to receive an amount of money in exchange for releasing the parties from liability and terminating any pending legal action against them. In the context of personal injury cases, the parties to a settlement are usually the injured claimant, an insurance company that has an obligation to pay the claimant’s losses, and (when applicable) an individual or corporate entity that has liability for the claimant’s damages. Quick Review of SettlementsĪ settlement is an agreement to resolve a legal claim out of court. Here’s what you need to know about getting paid after a personal injury settlement, and what a personal injury lawyer can do to make sure you receive all the money you need to cover your expenses and plan for the future. From the moment your claim settles, you can often expect to receive settlement money within a few weeks. But compared to the timeline for settling a claim, the wait to receive a payment is pretty short. The process of obtaining payment for a personal injury can feel like it drags on forever, especially when you have bills to pay and financial losses to cover.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |