Can You Get an Advance on a Settlement Check?

The short answer

Yes. If your case has settled and you are waiting on the money, that is post-settlement funding, and it is a different product from the one most of this site is about.

It is also usually the better deal of the two, for a reason worth understanding.

Why a settled case is cheaper to fund

Pre-settlement funding is priced against uncertainty. Nobody knows what the case is worth, whether it will win, or when it will end, so the funder is pricing a risk with three unknowns in it.

Once a case settles, two of those unknowns disappear. The amount is agreed and the outcome is decided. What is left is timing — how long the paperwork, liens and disbursement take — and timing risk is much cheaper than outcome risk.

So if you are choosing between taking an advance now and taking one six months ago, now is the cheaper moment. That is the opposite of how most financial products work, and it is worth knowing before you accept the first offer you are given.

Why the check takes so long anyway

Settling is not the same as being paid. Between the two sit several steps, and none of them are your attorney stalling.

The defendant's insurer has to issue the draft, which has its own internal timetable. It goes to your attorney's trust account rather than to you, because that is where liens get resolved. Then any medical liens, health insurer subrogation claims or unpaid providers have to be negotiated and paid, and those negotiations are frequently what takes the longest. Only then is the remainder disbursed.

Six to twelve weeks is ordinary. Longer is common where there are liens to argue about.

Where we cannot help, and where to go instead

Being straight about this: our funding partner writes pre-settlement funding only in New York and Michigan. If your case settled and you are in either of those states, we are not the right call, and we would rather say so than take an application we cannot place.

Elsewhere in the states we cover, a post-settlement advance is available on the same basis as any other application. And in the two states where it is not, several funders specialise in post-settlement work — it is worth searching specifically for that term rather than for lawsuit loans, because the products and the pricing are genuinely different.

• New York and Michigan: pre-settlement only through our partner
• Everywhere else we cover: post-settlement is available
• Search for post-settlement funding specifically — the pricing is not the same

One thing to check before you sign anything

Ask what happens if the disbursement takes longer than expected. On a settled case the funder is betting on timing, and the fee structure should reflect a short, fairly predictable wait. If the pricing looks the same as a pre-settlement advance on an unresolved claim, you are being charged for a risk that no longer exists.