Structured settlements are designed to help mitigate your financial situation and pay restitution for pain, suffering and injuries. Most of these settlements are due to personal injury or liability claims. However, if you find that your settlement payments aren’t quite enough to make your situation tenable, you might considering selling it. While this is possible, you need to know a bit more about potential structured settlement buyout problems. There are quite a few that can rear their heads, but you can avoid many of these.
You’re Going to Court
One thing that surprises many people is that they have to go back to court in order to sell a structured settlement (technically called a transfer). The judge will be responsible for determining if the sale is in your best interest and allowing it to proceed. This decision will be made on many different factors, including your financial situation and need. The court will not approve a transfer if you don’t actually need the funds immediately or can’t prove that you do.
Buyer Considerations
A huge issue when it comes to structured settlement buyout problems is the funding company buying your payments. The court is going to take a long, hard look at the terms being offered and if they don’t consider them “fair”, your transfer will be denied. What are fair terms? Essentially, the court wants to make sure that you’re not being taken advantage of, so fair would indicate a deal in which you get to keep the majority of your funds. In many instances, you can keep up to 90% of the money due you, but this varies considerably from company to company, so shopping around is very important.
Selling your belongings doesn’t usually require legal assistance, but the situation becomes a bit different when you’re talking about selling annuities. Do you need a lawyer to sell annuity payments? The answer here is a bit ambiguous. What should you know about the process and the need for expert legal help? Below, you’ll learn a bit more about the situation.
Maybe, But Maybe Not
First, understand that there are only eight states in the nation where “independent professional advice” is required for those selling annuity payments. Those states are Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, Louisiana, Delaware, Minnesota, Maine and Maryland. The types of advice that you’ll need include tax, legal and financial, and a professional in any of those areas can help. While only those eight states require it, all other states heavily recommend it.
It’s a Definitely a Good Idea to Sell Annuity Payments
While only the aforementioned states require that you have advice from a professional, it’s really a good idea to speak with an attorney or at least your financial planner before you decide to sell annuity payments. A financial planner can help you ensure that you’re making the right decision for your financial future, and a lawyer can help you learn whether or not your annuity can actually be sold (there are many instances in which sale of annuity payments is prohibited, including an inherited annuity or one where sale is prohibited by a trust). Therefore, while it might not be a legal requirement for you, it’s always a good idea to have access to expert counsel from an attorney.
When it comes to your money, most people assume that how it’s used is really up to them. That includes structured settlement payments and annuities. However, that’s not actually the case. Most states now have laws in place governing how structured settlements must be handled, including sales (technically transfers). Can a court actually reject a structured settlement transfer? The straightforward answer is yes, the court can deny any transfer, but there’s more to the story.
A Deeper Look
To really understand what’s going on here, you need to know more about the history of the industry. Many states and consumer advocate groups have long taken a dim view of structured settlement transfers due to the predatory nature of some companies operating in the country. These companies preyed on the unwary and the desperate, convincing them that selling structured settlements was the best option for their financial situation.
Most states have now enacted laws to protect consumers from these companies. The immediate upshot is that all transfers (sales) must go through litigation – the case has to be heard by a judge. The judge will then determine if the transfer is in the payee’s best interests and whether or not to allow the sale to move forward. In many cases, the judge denies the transfer. Why is this?
Are you looking for Litigation Financing?
Structured Settlement Quotes (SSQ) provides litigation financing in a s little as 24-48 hours. We provide these funds allowing your attorney to concentrate on winning your case, while also allowing you to pay your monthly bills on time with no financial worries.
SSQ provides non-recourse litigation financing, which means if you happen to lose your lawsuit case, you will not have to pay the lawsuit loan back to Structured Settlement Quotes.
Litigation financing can be offered to most pending lawsuit cases including; automobile accidents, personal injury cases, and workers compensation cases. Many other cases do apply for a lawsuit advance. Fill out the form below to see if your case qualifies.
Litigation financing can be offered to directly to attorneys and firms.
By filling out the form below, a qualified representative will contact you finishing up the application process for your lawsuit loan. We will send a form to be completed by your attorney. Once you are approved you can receive a check within 48 hours.
Please use the form below to contact us. We'll respond to your inquiry as soon as possible.
We are disappointed today by John Darer’s blog response to our article of yesterday (see below). While Mr. Darer is entitled to make allegations, conjecture and innuendo to suit his own agenda, whatever that may be, it is our view that such response misses the point.
The point is that Structured Settlement Quotes provides annuitants with the best prices in the industry. Don’t take our word for it. In a decision of the Rhode Island Superior Court on February 11, 2011, a jurisdiction that carefully monitors structured settlement annuitant discount rates, the Court Record finds that the annuitant, an SSQ client, had obtained the best deal out of over 200 cases in the State that had been heard up to that date.
While Mr. Darer may choose not to refer his clients to SSQ for his own reasons, and therefore we regret that we may not be able to help them out, we will continue to do our very best for those who do choose to seek out our service.
Structured Settlement Quotes
888-665-1257
Today, we are very pleased to launch our new Structured Settlement Quotes service.
Three months in the making, our new and improved Structured Settlement Marketplace is designed to:
1. Provide helpful information to annuitants thinking of selling structured settlement payment rights; and
2. Enhancing the online interactive experience to better serve our clients, not only striving to get them the best price available in the marketplace today, but also to make our Customer Service Experts more accessible to assist with questions and planning.
We, at Structured Settlement Quotes, are proud of the fact that our clients get the most money for their structured settlement payments by having funding companies compete for their business. In fact, recently we were able to get an annuitant a selling discount rate of 6.99 percent. Our average discount rate to annuitants for 2011 was below 9 percent.
Over the coming weeks we shall be reaching out to the structured settlement broker industry to inform everyone about our service. Some of you already may have received introductory emails from Lisa Newton of our firm.
1. Kansas- Prohibits shooting rabbits from a motorboat.
2. Florida- Women may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer, as can the salon owner.
3. Florida- If an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle.
4. Florida- Having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal.
5. California- Animals are banned from mating publicly within 1,500 feet of a tavern, school, or place of worship.
6. Alabama- It is illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church.
7. North Dakota- It is illegal to lie down and fall asleep with your shoes on.
8. Ohio- It is illegal to fish for whales on Sunday.
9. Ohio- It is illegal to get a fish drunk.
10. Texas- It is illegal to drive without windshield wipers. You don't need a windshield, but you must have the wipers.
11. Texas- It is illegal to milk another person's cow.
12. Texas- The entire Encyclopedia Britannica is banned in Texas because it contains a formula for making beer at home.
13. Texas- A recently passed anti crime law requires criminals to give their victims 24 hours notice, either orally or in writing, and to explain the nature of the crime to be committed.
14. New York- A license must be purchased before hanging clothes on a clothesline.
15. Nebraska- It is illegal for bar owners to sell beer unless they are simultaneously brewing a kettle of soup.
This author is overjoyed to announce that Section 1 of Vermont's Structured Settlement Protection ACT (or SSPA) went into effect on July 1st, 2012.
Upon passage in the State legislature, sections 2, 3, 4, and 5 become law.
When a tort victim becomes a member of Settlement Quotes they are asked a series of questions to understand their payment stream, personal info, and what other quotes they have received. It is astonishing to see the discount rates that other companies offer.
