You need to know this before you sign any documents from your insurance company. Your insurance company will send you certain documents. One of them will be a release form. Your personal injury lawyer will tell you certain things that you need to know before you sign them.
Negotiate before you sign
Your personal injury lawyer will tell you that there are some documents from your insurance company that you just should not sign. You should know that you’ll be able to negotiate the terms of the documents with your insurance company only, if you have a personal injury lawyer.You won’t get a settlement from the insurance company otherwise. So the moral here is that you’ll need to hire a personal injury lawyer in St John’s if you really want to get out of signing forms from the insurance company that you are not legally required to.
The message of the release
The legal terms in the release and its language may sound intimidating and complex. Don’t let this scare you. It simply says that you are waiving your legal rights to sue the defendant and anyone else who may have caused your personal injury accident for further damages even if you really need the money. The whole point of the release form is to prevent the insurance company from having to pay you even more money for the personal injury accident because you levy lawsuits against it in the future.
Make sure you have your personal injury lawyer read the documents, and especially the release forms, from the insurance company. He or she will be able to quickly and easily spot any hidden clauses that may work against you and explain them to you.
For example, there is the MSA provision. Basically, if you have Medicare or Medicaid and you receive a settlement, the money has to be placed in the MSA and neither Medicare nor Medicaid will pay you money until all of the funds in the MSA have been used up. Since personal injury law doesn’t require you to set up an MSA, you could be forfeiting several tens of thousands of dollars from either Medicare or Medicaid by setting one up.
You need to understand the fine print
The bottom line is that insurance companies are tricky and clever in terms of the language that they put in the documents that they send you after your personal injury accident. You need to hire a good lawyer to help you understand these so that you can safeguard your rights!