Structured Settlements Help Serious Injury Victims
For nearly 25 years, the federal government has encouraged the general public to use structured settlements in serious injury cases. Structured settlements have also gained the favor of plaintiff attorneys, state attorneys general, legislators, judges, and disability advocates.Before 1982, serious injury victims were awarded damages in the form of a single lump sum. This form of payment, especially in catastrophic injury cases, often put the injury victim and his family in a financial bind. With the victim unaccustomed to managing such large sums of money, there was the ever present danger of unwise financial decisions.
The Periodic Payment Settlement Act; Helping Protect Injury Victims with Mismanaging Lump Sum Payments
Such decisions can spell disasters like the premature loss of funds before the victim’s medical treatment completed. These bad judgment calls also risk putting lump sum recipients on public assistance. To address these concerns, a bipartisan coalition of legislators in Congress took action to amend the federal tax code. Thus, the Periodic Payment Settlement Act of 1982 (Public Law 97-473) came to be. The Act formally recognized and encouraged the use of structured settlements in serious injury cases so that injury victims could be protected from maladjustment to sudden wealth.
