Hello from Abbott Law Firm. We are a personal injury law firm and we help people that have been involved in automobile accidents. One of the issues that frequently arises is minor settlements. In Utah, a minor is any person under the age of 18 and that person does not have the contractual ability or the capacity, I guess I should say, to sign a release releasing the other party or the insurance company for liability following a personal injury.
One of the things we help people do is part of the services that we provide is to obtain a conservatorship. A conservatorship is obtained when we make an application to the judge and we go before the judge and explain why a conservator needs to be appointed. In this instance, it would be because we have somebody under the age of 18 who wants to settle a case and obtain a settlement and we need a conservator appointed who can sign the settlement papers for that minor. When the conservator is appointed, they take on certain responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is the conservator must safeguard the property of the minor. The property of the minor is the minor’s share of the settlement so we can pay the attorney’s fees, we can pay the medical bills, other out-of-pocket expenses that might have been incurred. But then, there’s a lump sum that’s leftover. What do we do with that? Well, it’s the conservator’s responsibility to safeguard that for the minor until the minor turns 18.
A lot of times, we worry that hey, this is a lot of money and an 18-year-old may not have the maturity or the experience to know what to do with that kind of money when they turn 18 years old. There are a couple of options we can pursue. One is to obtain an annuity. An annuity is simply a contract that we make with an insurance company, usually a different insurance company than the one we just settled with. But the insurance company agrees that every month or every six months or quarter or whatever it is, they’re going to pay a certain amount of money to the injured minor, usually after they turn 18 years old. They can use that as a college fund or this type of thing. Maybe money to buy a new house or they could get it when they’re a little bit older. That’s one of the things we help people do. We have the connections setup with the annuity companies that do this for minors.
Another option is to set up a trust. Probably most of you are familiar with that, but a trust is simply a legal entity that’s set up that manages the money. The trustee manages the money until the minor is ready to obtain it. One of the problems sometimes we run into is we might need to set up what’s called a special needs trust. A special needs trust. It’s just a subset of trust and it has special provisions in it that do certain things for the benefit of that minor. Those are some of the options that we can do when we settle cases for minors.
Again as I stated, that’s part of the service we provide is helping the parents of the minor to navigate these issues and decide what is best for that minor and how we should get that settled and then go to court and get the necessary judge approval to make that happen. If you have any questions, go ahead and you can text us, call us or chat with us online, or even send us an email. We’d be happy to talk to you about your case. Thank you.