Understanding Structured Settlements for Minor Children

When a parent or guardian chooses to place their minor child’s personal injury settlement into a structured settlement, there’s a lot of flexibility the parent has in how that money gets released to the child. Many of our clients choose to make this settlement a college fund of sorts for their child. They receive a large payment once a year for four years that they could use for tuition, and then they get the rest of the money after they expect the child to have graduated from college. If you can imagine it, you can pretty much make it happen with a structured settlement. There are some limitations, however. One of the things that we have noticed recently is that probate judges prefer the minor child to receive the money sooner rather than later. So if you think we’re going to be able to push the payments out until the child is in their 30s or 40s, that’s not likely to happen. Usually the courts want the child to have received all of their money by the time they’re 25.