Your bills are piling up and you don’t know where the money is going to come from. You have settlement money flowing in, but it’s just not enough each month to cover your family’s needs. You decide that now is the time to get a lump sum of cash for your future structured settlement payments. Now what? Educating yourself on the process of selling your structured settlement will position you in the best possible way to maximize your offers.
The first step in the process is to determine if selling your structured settlement is the best solution for your situation. Have you exhausted the more traditional sources of raising cash? If your answer is yes, the next step is to start getting offers.
You next need to gather the important information regarding your structured settlement. This will be needed to get offers. The most important information is the name of the insurance company, the amount of each payment you are set to received, and the date of each payment. This information is required for the calculation each company will perform to give you an offer. It is also helpful to start gathering your actual structured settlement agreement from the court settlement, the actual insurance contract from the carrier and the benefits letter. The benefits letter will list in detail every payment you are set to receive and on what date it will be paid.
There are really two major ways to find the factoring companies that will purchase your payments. The first is to look for the television advertisements that seem to run constantly on some of the major cable news channels. These are definitely the big players in the business of buying structured settlements. One thing to remember is that those television ads can be expensive. You have to wonder how that can affect the offers they are willing to make. The other major resource is of course the internet. Doing a quick search on Google will show you just how vast the number of companies that are out there. The internet is a lower cost method for the factoring companies to reach potential clients wanting to sell their payments. It is also an efficient and effective way for you to quickly get multiple offers for your settlement. The lower overhead of the web-based companies should allow them to be more competitive with their offers.
Once you find an acceptable offer, that company will usually send you an initial application along with a list of required documents. Again, you will need to provide your settlement agreement, benefits letter, a copy of your annuity contract, two photo ID’s, possibly a qualified assignment form, and an order for minors claim if you were a minor when your settlement occurred. The faster you can turn this information around, the faster the process from start to finish.
The company buying your settlement will perform a background check looking for any outstanding liens or judgements that may restrict your ability sell. Once your information is reviewed and found complete, the factoring company will send you closing documents to sell your structured settlement. Once the closing documents are received and reviewed, then the company buying your settlement will now schedule a court date to complete the transfer. Every state regulates the sale of structured settlement payments. It is necessary on every transaction that a judge review the transaction and approve. This is for your protection as well as the company buying the payments.
Once the court approves the transfer, a copy of the order is sent to the insurance carrier. Once the carrier acknowledges the transfer of the settlement payment, the company purchasing your structured settlement payment will wire or mail your money. This is just a brief overview of the process, but should be enough to get you off to a good start.
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