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Settlement Loans
American Pride Legal Funding (APLF) is a premier lawsuit loan company that provides car accident loans and settlement loans. Settlement loans are referred to in a variety of ways including pre settlement loans, legal funding loans, and legal settlement loans.
Essentially, we provide you an advance before your case settles. If you lose your case, then you don’t have to pay back the advance. So, a settlement loan is not a traditional loan.
In fact, settlement loans and car accident loans are not loans at all. There is no repayment to us if you lose your case. That is why they are often referred to as a lawsuit cash advance or a car accident cash advance.
There is a tremendous amount of disinformation on pre settlement lawsuit funding and lawsuit cash advances in general. We’ll provide you practical information and help you understand all the pertinent topics. We will cut to the chase and speak in plain language, so you have a clear picture of legal finance and lawsuit funding companies.
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* We do not offer funding to residents of Maryland, Colorado, Arkansas, Kentucky, Vermont, and Nebraska.
How Much Funding Can I Receive?
Settlement loans can range from $1000 to $2,000,000. The more valuable your case is, the settlement loan you can qualify for. You can just give us a call and we’ll give you an indication of how much we can advance. The amount of your settlement loan can vary greatly depending on the details of your case.
How Long Does it Take to Process My Settlement Loan
How Long Does It Take for Settlement Loans to Process?
Once you are approved, funds from your settlement loan can be sent to you in as little as 24 Hours.
The field of lawsuit funding, also known as legal finance is new. And the field has grown rapidly in the past twenty years. Each year there are millions of lawsuits filed each year by Americans and approximately 6 million Americans hire an attorney to seek compensation. The person who files a lawsuit is called the “plaintiff” and the person getting sued is called the “defendant.”
Many plaintiffs face financial hardship and the average automobile accident case takes more than a year to resolve. For instance, after a car accident, a final settlement often takes about 18-24 months and many people need financial assistance after a car accident. For that reason, settlement loans often referred to as a “lawsuit loan”, “pre-settlement funding,” or “a lawsuit cash advance,” can be helpful.
Settlement Loans Have Been Around For a Long Time
Legal funding involves the process of providing plaintiffs with a settlement loan against the proceeds of their lawsuit. Loans from a pending lawsuit is not a new idea. But, as the industry grows, more people are becoming aware of the help that is available after a car accident or other type of personal injury.
Put another way, settlement loan funding is a practice in which individuals who are involved in a lawsuit receive money from one of several pre settlement loan companies (a type of specialty finance company). This company takes a lien against the proceeds of a personal injury lawsuit in return for immediate cash.
However, settlement loans are a non-recourse advance.
It isn’t considered a loan at all. Although many in legal finance describe advances as “lawsuit lending” or “lawsuit settlement loans.” This is because the money doesn’t have to be repaid if the plaintiff’s lawsuit is unsuccessful. You only payback the advance if you win your case.
People seeking settlement loans include anyone who is out of work and injured. Or anyone who gets behind on their bills. Other sources of capital may not be available. However, you can “borrow” against your auto accident or personal injury lawsuit and receive a loan from your lawsuit. Here are some examples of the types of cases that Lawsuit Funding Companies advances money against:
Motor Vehicle Accidents
Premises Liability (Slip and Fall)
Workers Compensation
Construction Accidents
Wrongful Death
Medical Malpractice
Maritime And Jones Act Cases
Railroad Accidents
Products Liability
Lawsuits are a Part of American Culture
Lawsuits are a part of American life. Lawsuits account for over $300 billion spent annually. The legal funding industry arose in the early 1990s. The industry has grown more and more and is praised by many as an invaluable service as an industry within an industry.
There are three main segments in personal injury lawsuit funding. These include lawsuit loans for worker’s compensation, slip & falls, and car accident loans.
Motor vehicle accident lawsuit loans also known as car accident cash advances are for cases where there was a moving violation and there is an insurance policy that is going to pay the driver or passenger for damages and medical expenses. These are by far the most common personal injury case.
Slip and Fall Lawsuit Loans are for cases that are often premises liability cases. A person is at a business or residence and they have an accident. These are also a very common personal injury lawsuit loan.
Worker’s Compensation Lawsuit Loans are for claims against a form of insurance that provides compensation and medical care for employees who are injured during employment, in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee’s right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence.
There are over 10 million lawsuits active in the American Judicial System and each year approximately 3 million new lawsuits are filed. The number of active cases in the system will only continue to grow on an annual basis.
The Traditional Loan vs. the Pre Settlement Loan
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”
Debt finance is where you would borrow money and pay a monthly interest rate just like when you purchase a home. You must be qualified. They check your credit. Banks are risk adverse. In the case of buying a home, the security is the home; if you don’t keep up with the payments on the mortgage, the bank has the right to step in foreclose and repossess the house which they would then sell in effort to raise money to then payback the debt.
Lawsuit loans rely on the actual merits of the case as collateral. You are not personally responsible for your lawsuit cash advance.
Qualifying for Lawsuit Settlement Advances
Legal funding companies look closely at a variety of factors to see if a person qualifies for a lawsuit loan.
Damages:
Normally, these are severe injuries that require time off work.
Liability:
It must be clear from the legal funders perspective that the defendant has a strong liability for causing the damage. In other words, it should be apparent that the defendant is at fault.
Insurance/Ability to Pay:
Having the ability to pay means the defendant has insurance coverage. Typically, a pre settlement funding company will not fund a case without insurance coverage.
Attorney on Contingency Fee:
The attorney on your case must be paid on a contingency fee basis. The attorney like the legal funding company must be compensated from the proceeds of the case.
Sufficient Investment Margins:
When a lawsuit funding company decides whether to give you an advance on the case, they weigh what other expenses will be paid out by the proceeds of your settlement. Most likely, the funder will do a public records search to see if there are any other liens or encumbrances against the case.
Background Check:
Although lawsuit loan companies don’t care if you have bad credit they will check to ensure the applicant isn’t in bankruptcy.
If your case is approved, the legal funding company will make you an offer of roughly 10-15% of the expected settlement of your personal injury lawsuit.
Receiving a car accident loan on a pending lawsuit is both complex and simple.
The Underwriter
The underwriters or liquidity providers are those legal funding companies or investors that are willing to advance personal injury loans to claimants whose injury claims possess sufficient merit. The legal funding companies do this in exchange for the right to a position of the expected future proceeds of the settlement or award.
Your Attorney and Your Settlement Loan
A settlement loan can be used by the plaintiff for day-to-day living expenses, medical costs or to help with litigation costs while the case is pending.
However, the whole mechanism and process of legal funding hinges on the attorney and their cooperation. What is required of the attorney? First, they must provide the requested documents to the underwriter, in order to evaluate whether the case has sufficient merits to satisfy their respective risk models; and secondly if approved the attorney will need to sign the contract acknowledging placement of a lien on the case and agree to perform the duty of escrow agent in order for that client to fund. You will not be able to obtain a cash advance on your pending lawsuit without cooperation of your attorney.
Usually, the underwriter will start by reviewing all the documentation associated with the case and will speak with the plaintiff’s attorney to address any issues or concerns they may have.
They will consider all the information they collected including damages, liability, defendant’s ability to pay, plaintiff’s background and whether there is sufficient margin for investment.
Finally, the underwriters arrive at a decision. They will either deny, approve or postpone a decision subject to further information/documentation.
If your settlement loan is approved, a contract will be sent for execution to the attorney and plaintiff and the funds will be sent out to the plaintiff. Once approved you can have your funds in as little as 24 hours.
