Change in legislation for Minnesota by Claudia Green (claudia@eaglesettlements.com)

It would seem that Minnesota is going to be changing its current

legislation in regard to selling structured settlements as of August 1

2014. The reason for this change is to try and ensure that structured

settlement annuitants are better protected than they presently are by

making judges aware and giving them access to the previous

transaction history an annuitant may have. The new legislation has

been authored by Rep. Debra Hilstrom.

As Hilstom puts it, "this really is a consumer protection issue. This is

to make sure everyone knows and understands the consequences of

these sales, and so a judge can really evaluate whether or not

someone in a stressful situation knows what they're getting into."

Under current Minnesota legislation, there has been no requirement

for judges to be made aware of or have access to the prior

transaction history an annuitant may have with regard to

selling structured settlement annuity payments. As a result, some

cases have been approved by judges which, if they had actually

known the prior transaction history, they potentially would have

denied instead.

There was a particular case in Minneapolis a few years ago which

highlighted this flaw in the legislation. A lady who had been awarded

a structured settlement as a result of lead poisoning in childhood

came before a judge wanting to sell a large amount of her settlement

payments. The judge decided to appoint a guardian ad litem and it

was subsequently found that the annuitant had already sold a huge

amount of her structured settlement payments in two prior

transactions. As a result, her monthly periodic payments had been

drastically reduced to a pittance in comparison to what they originally

were.

This new legislation in Minnesota will hopefully ensure that

annuitants wanting to sell structured settlement payments are not

ripped off by unscrupulous factoring companies who are purely

concerned with how much profit they make. At Eagle Settlements, we

frequently hear of situations in which other structured

settlement factoring companies take advantage of vulnerable

annuitants. I fully appreciate that a business needs to make a profit,

but I do not accept that this should be done at the expense of

someone down on their luck. I for one am, therefore, fully behind the

new legislation in Minnesota. Anything that can protect an annuitant

cannot be a bad thing.