Car accidents are horrible events that take many lives and cost people a lot of money. Fortunately, victims can recover from those accidents by asking for a personal injury settlement. Receiving that payment helps people pay for medical bills and legal costs, but the insurance company sometimes takes too much time to pay settlement funds.
Due to that scenario, some victims are anxious about when the insurance company will ultimately pay their injury claim. Although some states give insurance companies a deadline to pay each personal injury claim, most of these settlements are delivered relatively quickly.
It is normal to worry about how much time you can expect insurance companies to give you your settlement money. Here, we tell you how insurance companies pay for personal injury settlements and other related things.
What Happens If the Insurance Company Takes Too Much Time to Pay a Personal Injury Settlement?
Insurance companies sometimes take too much time to pay for a car accident settlement, and that’s when your injury lawyer can help you. If the insurance company takes way much more time than expected, your injury attorney can always file a complaint about that and even sue the insurance company.
Since everyone understands the impact of a severe injury, it’s not common to see an insurance company taking too much time to pay for a personal injury settlement. However, you need to be ready for those situations, so don’t hesitate to ask your lawyer to address the problem.
Do I Need a Personal Injury Attorney for These Situations?
All parties involved in a personal injury case should hire an attorney to deal with everything related to the car accident. That is because they know how to take care of all the legal processes needed to address the situation.
Many people get worried about how expensive legal fees can be when hiring a law firm for a settlement process. However, doing it represents an investment that you profit from when receiving the settlement check. Some lawyers even make it possible for the victim to receive compensation for the legal expenses.
Speaking with a lawyer about your accident eases the whole process due to how experienced they are on the matter. They also know all the tricks insurance companies may try to avoid paying the victim fair compensation for what happened. Naturally, the law firm you hire also follows the attorney-client relationship, so it can’t reveal any information you tell its lawyers.
Personal injury lawyers are experts when negotiating with insurance companies and can also help you collect all the evidence you need to take the case to trial. Don’t hesitate to ask law firms for a free consultation of your case!
How Long Does It Take to Receive a Personal Injury Settlement Check?
Answering the primary question of this article, the average time victims can take to receive a settlement check is four or six weeks. Nonetheless, more complex cases take more time since many things to consider when asking for a settlement check.
Consequently, straightforward cases can issue a settlement check in two weeks or less. Complexity is not the only thing that can make your settlement check arrive late since other factors affect the situation too. Here are some of the problems that could delay your injury settlement check:
Expensive Compensations
Apart from legal or factual problems, the amount of money the liable party has to pay the victim can delay the payment for a considerable time. The reason for that is that insurance company processes are not short, and no one will pay an expensive sum without a thorough investigation.
Expensive personal injury claims mostly come from victims asking for medical expenses, pain, suffering, or wrongful death cases. Anyone asking for money for medical expenses needs to gather the medical records of the injured victims as evidence. Mixing all those things can even multiply the settlement amount.
Maximum Medical Improvement
When someone gets legal representation to deal with a health insurance company, the victim needs to consider some things. One of them is that most people make personal injury claims after reaching maximum medical improvement. You can’t ask for more money once you receive your settlement check, so receiving those funds in the middle of medical treatment can make you lose more money in the long run.
Therefore, many victims wait for the treatment to finish to ask the company for compensation. However, most lawyers recommend victims do that to avoid having unpaid debts in the future.
How Much Money Can I Ask for in a Personal Injury Claim?
Everything depends on how severe the accident was and how much financial damage it caused the victim and the liable party. Mild car accidents are sometimes worth hundreds of dollars, but more dangerous ones can cost people thousands.
Pain and suffering cases can even get to six figures, which can be devastating for paying that compensation. The country’s most significant personal injury settlement was worth $206 billion, so you can only imagine how much money you can ask for in an accident like that.
Regardless of that, the money victims receive only covers medical expenses, legal fees, and pain and suffering issues. Injury claims help you pay for the accident-related costs, but not many victims have any compensation money left after that.
Bottom Line
As you can see, there are many things to consider when making an injury claim. The average process takes four or six weeks, though, so ask your lawyer for legal advice to determine if there’s a situation that can genuinely delay the process.
Remember, lawyers are always available for you, and you should never let an insurance company take advantage of you. As a victim, you deserve justice and compensation, so make sure to build the best personal injury claim you can to get as much money as possible.
