Partner with afiduciarywho protects your clients’ settlements.

A fiduciary is legally bound to act in your client’s best interest, not to sell a commission-based product. That protects the recovery and reduces your own malpractice exposure on benefit, Medicare, and tax decisions. Many structured-settlement brokers are insurance producers paid by the annuity issuer (commonly about 4% of premium) and owe no fiduciary duty.

Settlement form, taxes, and benefit preservation are competence and communication issues under ABA Model Rules 1.1 and 1.4. In the Texas Grillo case, a minor’s lump-sum settlement with no structure and no special needs trust cost her Medicaid eligibility; the attorney and guardian ad litem later paid a combined $4.1 million to settle malpractice claims. A fiduciary planner addresses those gaps and documents the client’s informed choices.

Yes — for contingency fees, attorney fee deferral lets you agree before settlement to receive fees over a future schedule and pay income tax only as each payment is received. The strategy is validated by Childs v. Commissioner, 103 T.C. 634 (1994), aff’d 89 F.3d 856 (11th Cir. 1996). The election must be made before you have an unconditional right to the fee, so the conversation has to start before the settlement and release are signed.

A QSF (a “468B fund” under IRC §468B and Treas. Reg. §1.468B-1) is a court-supervised fund that receives the settlement so the defendant can take its deduction and exit, while your clients gain time to resolve liens, set up trusts, evaluate structures, and elect fee deferral before anyone is in constructive receipt. It is most powerful in multi-claimant and lien-heavy matters; we treat single-claimant QSFs conservatively because Treasury has never issued definitive guidance.

Yes. We coordinate Medicare Secondary Payer compliance and Medicare Set-Asides where future injury-related care is foreseeable, and first-party special needs trusts under 42 U.S.C. §1396p(d)(4)(A) to keep Medicaid and SSI eligibility intact — the SSI countable-resource limit is just $2,000 for an individual. We also build long-term medical-cost planning into the plan from a life-care plan, the step most planners overlook.

As early as possible — ideally before mediation, and always before the settlement agreement and release are signed. Early involvement preserves tax-free structuring under IRC §104(a)(2), the attorney fee-deferral election, and benefit eligibility, all of which can be lost once funds are constructively received. You can refer a client through our contact form and we coordinate from there.