If someone harms you, then you may decide to sue them. If so, you’re entering the realm of personal injury law. It’s not the most fun place to be. You probably want to collect the money you feel the responsible party owes you for your financial losses, and possibly for the pain and suffering you went through.
To get that money, you will presumably need a skilled personal injury lawyer. If you live in a decent-sized city, you should have no issues finding one. Many attorneys get into personal injury law, since they can often make a comfortable living that way.
You should know how personal injury attorneys negotiate fair settlements. You should also understand what you might do with your settlement money if you choose to accept the amount the defendant offers you. Let us talk about that in detail right now.
Should You Take a Settlement or Go to Trial?
First, you need to figure out whether you should take the settlement amount that a defendant and their lawyer offer you or whether you should still take the matter up in court. Many times, a personal injury case will not reach a courtroom setting. That will only happen if you don’t accept a settlement offer or the defendant won’t offer you one.
Typically, a defendant will talk to their lawyer and ask them whether or not you have a case with which a jury will sympathize. Keep in mind that proving civil damages doesn’t require the same burden or proof that you’ll see with criminal accusations.
In other words, if you have less evidence, but you seem believable, a jury might side with you and award you at least some compensation. It’s not like if the legal system says you committed a criminal act. Then, the prosecutor must convince a jury that you did something beyond a reasonable doubt.
Because of that, it often doesn’t take that much for a defendant’s lawyer to tell them that they should settle. If you can provide enough evidence of what you allege happened during the trial’s discovery phase, that might induce a settlement offer.
If the number seems right, then you can take it. If your lawyer says you should negotiate because they think you can get more, then you can certainly do that.
Assuming you accept a settlement offer, whether it’s the first one or a subsequent one, you’ll then need to figure out what you should do with the money that’s coming your way.
First, You Must Pay Your Lawyer and Cover Any Outstanding Bills
Before you can do anything else with that money, you must pay your attorney. You probably set up a contingency payment plan with them. That means you must pay them only if they get you a settlement or win your case.
They may take as much as a 35% or even 40% of your winnings in some instances. That may seem like a lot, but the lawyer did give you their legal expertise. You probably couldn’t win the case without it.
After that, you must think about paying any outstanding bills you currently have. Maybe because of what the defendant did, you could not work for a very long time. Perhaps you have some outstanding electric and gas bills. You may have to pay your landlord back rent. Maybe you have late mortgage payments instead.
You may have outstanding medical bills if you had to have surgery following the defendant hurting you or making you ill. You should pay all of that off before you do anything else. Then, you can look at how much you have remaining.
Speak to Your Family About This Decision
Next, it makes sense that you talk to any other adults with whom you live about what you’ll do with the remaining money. What you can do depends on how much you have left.
You should take the opinions of the other adults in your family into account. If you have a spouse or partner, their opinion certainly matters.
However, you should ultimately make the final decision. You sustained the injury or got sick from what the defendant did. You should get to decide how you’ll spend the money.
Some Options
You might decide to simply save the money in a savings account. If you don’t have a nest egg, or if you’ve never had one before, you probably don’t want to waste this presumably one-time windfall.
You can invest in the stock market. Maybe you’ll contact a financial advisor and ask them what you should do with the cash if you don’t know much about investing.
You can keep the money and save it for the college tuitions of your kids when they get older. If you don’t have children, though, or if they graduated from college already, you won’t have this option.
You might use some of the money and move from an apartment into your own house. If you’re not already a homeowner, that probably appeals. You may never have this kind of chance again if you do not make a lot of money at your job.
You may decide to do something more frivolous with the money, or at least some of it. Maybe you will take a trip to Spain, Japan, or Scotland. Think about where you have always wanted to go. Now might represent the best and only chance you will ever get.
It’s probably best that you do something responsible with the money, but if you don’t feel like it, you can spend it on a sports car, or a waterbed, or something equally luxurious but impractical. Remember that you endured something to get this money, perhaps something very difficult and painful. If you don’t want to spend the money on something responsible, that’s your prerogative.
However, it’s probably best that you think about what to spend the money on that will make your life better, not to mention your loved ones.
