Legal Question in Personal Injury in California

Re: getting money from my structured settlement

With rare exception, you cannot accelerate or change the terms of a structured annunity. It's like a binding contract. In fact, I don't know of any exceptions. You could always talk to the Life ins. co. that is handling it to see what they say. There are some companies who will cash out your structure for pennies on the dollar if you are desparate but I don't recommend it. You could apply to finance a car and use your monthly money to help make the payments.

Re: getting money from my structured settlement

If the structured settlement is already in existence you will have to either talk to the annuity company about restructuring, or alternatively talk to lenders about accepting a lien against your annuity payments.

Re: getting money from my structured settlement

In addition to the options Mr. Roth mentioned, you can try to sell some or all of your future payments for a lump sum. There are a number of companies which purchase structured settlements, but of course the reason they are willing to do this is because the amount of money they give you is less than the current value of the future income stream they are buying. This means you won't get a good deal in purely financial terms, but if you want to get a large sum now this is a way to go about it.

Be sure to read the terms of your settlement agreement before making a deal like this one; there may be restrictions which would affect whether and / or how you can sell part of the settlement.

Good luck.