New Jersey Structured Settlements: Know Your Rights and Laws

Laws on the books in New Jersey concerning selling structured settlements, passed in 2001, require that any transfers of structured settlement payments be approved by a court (or administrative authority, depending on the case) and that the best interest of the party currently receiving settlement payments be considered. In addition, the receiving party must be notified of their right to seek independent professional advice. Other than that, the rules and regulations regarding selling your structured settlement for cash in New Jersey are the same as they would be if you lived in Colorado or Rhode Island. Then again, if you DID live in one of those states, you might be looking up a whole new set of statutes. The best thing to do to make sure your rights (and money) are protected would be to first find an attorney (if you don’t already have one) you can trust to inform you of the laws in your state regarding selling off your structured settlement payments so you know what you may be getting yourself into should you decide to sell your structured settlement as a New Jersey resident.
Many New Jersey residents are familiar with tactics factoring companies use to get them to trade in their structured settlements for a lot less cash in the form of a lump sum payment. It may start with a telemarketer’s call or mass e-mail, or it may be even more insidious in the form of television commercials. If you give them an opening, one or more will swoop in and try to present the most attractive buy-out package they can to get you to give up your possible retirement income in favor of what may seem like a great deal. I mean, what sounds better than a company offering to give you a sum of cash right away (or at least in a month or two) instead of making you wait every month or year to get your structured settlement in dozens or hundreds of small pieces? And yes, it does sound good. Especially if the reason behind the settlement has left you with mounting medical costs, mortgage payments, and other bills that you can’t pay for due to the accident or other incident.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t, as a legal resident of New Jersey, sell off your structured settlement as the above are excellent reasons to get a lump sum payment of more money rather than waiting for less (even less in fact due to inflation reducing how much money in general will be worth in the future). As a matter of fact, the above reason is one of, if not the only reasons to “cash in” your settlement in favor of a payout that, in actuality, will only be for 50 percent or less of the total amount of your settlement amount. Yes, less than 50 percent sounds daunting, but desperate times call for desperate measures as the saying goes so you very well may want to take it. Then again, if you have the money to spare, you may want to take the payment and have some fun.