Minor Death Case Payments Explained | Richmond Virginia Lawyer

I recently posted an article about a case in Hanover County near Richmond, Va about a man who was driving the wrong way down Interstate 295 and killed a man and left his daughters orphaned. It made me think of this case we had a while ago. I thought it might help clarify how minors get their money from insurance settlements.

There was a case we had in North Carolina where the mother of three children was killed and we settled the case. One of the children was an adult, one was about 17 and one was about 15.

So when we settled the case the judge split the settlement three ways so the one who was an adult got 1/3 of the money, the 17-year-old's money got out into a trust for a year and she got the money after she became an adult. The 15-year-old's money was put into an annuity payable a portion of it when they became an adult, another portion of it when they turned 25 and a third portion of it when they turned 30.

Frequently in these types of settlements one of the concerns of the court and the parties involved is the ability of the infant to handle money when they become an adult. The concern of the judge is that a young adult is going to get a large chunk of money and squander it. The courts don't like that. They want the young adults to be a little it more conservative and for that reason the courts will often extend the time in which they get money so that they only get a portion of it when they are a young adult, a portion when they turn 25 and another portion when they turn 30.

The general rule-of-thumb belief is that if they don't have any sense about money by the time they turn 30 they are probably never going to have it.