In this article, we will discuss how to finally pay for your treatment once your case has settled.
Your settlement will come in the form of a check from the insurance company, and will be sent to your attorney. Your attorney will then be obligated by law to pay any medical providers who have filed liens against you.
I would recommend reading this article to get an understanding of how liens affect your settlement.
Once we have deposited the settlement check into our client trust account, we must then deduct our expenses, and then our fees before disbursing the remainder to the client’s liens and to the client.
(If you want an overview of how contingency fee agreements work, and how legal fees and costs are paid out of settlements, then check our this article I wrote explaining that process).
Once you have settled your case, you now have the money to pay off your medical bills, as well as the lawyer that you hired. However, the law prescribes a precise order of priority in how each of those items are paid.
In a nutshell, here is the process:
If the client’s doctors filed a lien, then we will deduct the lien portion from the settlement and we will send it directly the lien holder/doctor. But if the medical provider did not file a lien, then we will not deduct that amount from the settlement.
As the client’s attorney, we only pay medical providers when those providers have filed a lien. Otherwise, we will disburse the remainder of the settlement to the client. We have no legal obligation to take money from the client and give it to some creditor who claims the client owes him money.
However, if the client requests otherwise, then we will send payment to the medical provider. We do what our clients want us to do! But we believe in letting the client make that decision.
}
I represent people who have been wronged. Whether injured in a traffic accident, treated unfairly by an insurance company, or harmed by powerful corporations or government agents, my clients call on me to fight back when they get pushed around. I understand that lawsuits can be stressful and at ...
