Structured settlements provide long-term, scheduled payments to people recovering from serious injuries, the loss of a loved one, and other life events.

Like any long-term financial arrangement, this approach works in many situations but not in every case. At times, a person may need immediate funds to keep their home, fix a car, pay medical bills, or support family members.

Structured settlement transfers give recipients the option to sell a portion of their future payments and receive cash today to help meet their immediate financial needs.

A recent segment on Last Week Tonight discussed our industry. We believe a fair portrayal should include the full picture: structured settlement transfers are highly regulated. Every sale must be approved and ordered by a judge. Pricing is fully disclosed and substantially lower than most alternatives. And, where there are cognitive concerns, we do not proceed with a transaction unless and until they are resolved.

We’d like to share this additional context with you.

Courts alone decide whether an individual can sell their structured settlement payments.

In every state, a judge must independently review, approve, and order all sales of structured settlement payments. The court must find, on the record, that a sale is in the client’s best interest. We cannot and will not complete a transaction unless directed by a court order.

As part of this assessment, the judge may ask questions of the client, request additional documents, involve family members or advisors, and deny the sale outright if they believe it is not in the client’s best interest.

We are not aware of any other consumer financial transaction—not mortgages, not credit cards, not personal loans—that provides for this type of independent judicial approval to protect clients.

Our discount rate averages about 10% per year.

You may have heard that factoring companies “keep 60% of the money.” That framing can be misleading because it compares payments received over decades with cash paid today. A dollar paid twenty or thirty years from now is not the same as a dollar available today.

A clearer way to understand the cost of a structured settlement sale is by evaluating its annual discount rate—analogous to the interest rate on a loan.

In recent years, our annual discount rate has averaged about 10%. That is meaningfully lower than the rates charged for credit cards, personal loans, vehicle title loans, and most other alternatives available to our clients.

The discount rate is clearly disclosed to sellers before a sale, together with all other economic terms, and must be approved by the court as part of any transaction.

When cognitive capacity is in doubt, the transaction stops.

While most structured settlements do not arise from injuries affecting cognition, some do. The individual cases that have appeared in recent news coverage are real, and the people in them deserve compassion.

We have consistently worked to identify and decline transactions when we were concerned that a prospective client may have a cognitive limitation or did not understand the terms. These are not transactions we have ever sought, nor is that who we are as a company.

Let us be clear: if a concern about cognitive capacity or understanding is raised—by a prospective client, family member, attorney, through our own interactions, or from any other source—we do not proceed unless that concern is resolved first. When uncertainty remains, we present the concern to the court so a judge can decide how to proceed.

By law, while we may ask about a prospective client’s private medical history, we cannot require its disclosure. This is a key reason why judicial review is so important. Judges can ask detailed questions under oath, inquire about medical circumstances, and obtain expert opinions. They can deny a transfer if they are not confident the seller understands the transaction or if they determine that it is not in the seller’s best interest.

Where the system has fallen short, we have been strong advocates for improving it—through heightened judicial inquiry, mandatory independent advice, and broader use of guardians ad litem.

Clients come to us with real-life needs.

People typically seek to sell their structured settlement payments because they need money for something important: staying in their home, helping a family member, medical bills, starting a business, or paying for school.

If the need is immediate, waiting years for future payments may not be a solution. We help provide an alternative, on terms a judge must first approve.

Some clients return because their financial needs change over time.

A structured settlement can last thirty or forty years. Over that time, a person’s needs may change more than once. Some clients decide that accessing another portion of their future payments makes sense for a new need or goal.

We apply particular care to repeat transactions. In a small number of cases, the same person has returned more frequently—most often because they sold smaller amounts initially to limit the financing cost. Each of these transactions, like every other, required a separate court order that determined that the transfer was in their best interest.

No one should be pressured into a sale.

The decision to pursue a sale of payments belongs entirely to the client. We prohibit misleading statements, improper inducements, coaching, and pressure of any kind. If a client does not understand the transaction, the discount rate, the future payments being transferred, or the cash they will receive, we will not proceed.

We file cases where the law requires them to be filed.

You may have heard claims about “forum shopping”—the notion that attorneys pick favorable courts. We do not forum shop.

Venue is set by state law, and we follow it. In most cases, that means filing where the seller lives. If a court directs filings to a specific venue, we follow that direction. We do not choose courts to avoid scrutiny or to seek an outcome.

In recent years, a number of states have strengthened their venue rules to disallow forum shopping. We have strongly supported these reforms as they codify the same practices we have long followed.

A final note.

Over a million Americans receive structured settlement payments today. Each year, a small portion of them determine, and a judge agrees, that they have an immediate financial need that cannot wait on a future payment. Most have a specific goal, complete one or two transactions, use the money for what they intended, and move on.

We seek to offer people who are owed long-term payments a court-supervised way to access part of those payments when their lives require it. We take both that role and our responsibilities to our clients seriously. We appreciate the public’s interest, and we welcome continued conversation with regulators, lawmakers, courts, and the clients we serve.

Updated 5/29/2026