The person that submits a personal injury claim hopes to be compensated for his or her losses. It often surprises such a claimant to learn that an outside party might have the right to seek reimbursement of a portion of the same claimant’s compensation.
The organization or person with such reimbursement rights holds a lien on the awarded compensation.
That same organization or person has covered some of the expenses that arose as a result of the incident that triggered the personal injury case.
Who might hold a lien on some accident victim’s awarded compensation?
• The federal or state government, if the victim has unpaid taxes.
• Medicare or Medicaid
• An organization that is handling the victim’s child support payments
• Medical providers: Some providers might have provided their medical services to the victim at the time of, or soon after the accident. Other providers might have offered their services to the victim during a period before the accident.
• A workers’ comp insurer
• A company that delivers long or short-term insurance payments.
• Other possible creditors
What is the best way to handle this sort of situation?
It is best to hire a Personal Injury Lawyer in Sherwood Park. Lawyers understand how to approach the demands made by a lien holder. The timing of that approach can have an effect on the amount of money requested by the lien holder.
Smart lawyers start negotiating with any lien holders before their client has received any compensation. At that point, the negotiator/lawyer might suggest that the client’s case is not especially strong. By making that suggestion, the same negotiator can imply that there is not that much money coming to anyone with reimbursement rights.
Once the person or organization that has claimed the reimbursement rights hears from the attorney of the person that appears deserving of a compensation package, it becomes clear that the same attorney will insist on a decrease in the lien’s size. That level of insistence can take the form of repeated calls.
If the attorney’s argument has convinced the other party that the client’s claim is not very strong, then the other party has little reason to want to deal with a lawyer’s repeated calls. In other words, the party that has had its eye on a portion of the compensation might feel ready to accept a smaller portion of that particular package.
That is the decision that the client’s lawyer has sought to encourage. Ideally, that decision gets made before the client receives that same compensation package. As a result, issues related to any lien tend to get resolved quickly. That is the hope of any claimant has hired a member of the legal profession. The lawyer can handle distribution of the awarded money.