Litigation

Plaintiff Settlement Solutions says:

A structured settlement annuity will guarantee periodic payments over a lifetime or over a specific period of time. Also known as "period certain." An annuity is an investment vehicle in which the plaintiff allows all or part of the award or settlement to be placed with an insurance company. In return, the insurance company guarantees inflation adjusted periodic payments for life or period certain.

Reality:

• A specified period of time is "period certain". Lifetime is never referred to as period certain because the duration of  life is well... uncertain.

• The insurance company does not provide "inflation adjusted payments". The best one can do at the current time is to have a fixed percentage increase that is compounded annually.

Plaintiff Settlement Solutions says:

Due to the difficulty of self-managing a cash settlement, 92% of all claimants exhaust their funds completely within the first five years.

• First of all Plaintiff Settlement Solutions has not cited the source of 92% statistic.

• Many other settlement  settlement consultants use a 90% figure and cite a California Law Practice Guide from 1992. 
• An NYU Law student named Jeremy Babener published e a white paper in 2009 based on his extensive research that highlighted the lack of empirical evidence to back up the 90% statistic.

(in 2010) Congress created this significant financial advantage 20 years ago to give beneficiaries a strong incentive to choose a structured settlement.

It's website was recently redone, thus by my count that  means PSSI alleges 1990 was the watershed moment in structured settlement history.

This all happened before 1990...

1979- Significant IRS Private Letter Ruling 79-220

1982-Periodic Payment Settlement Act of 1982  <-Congress involved in this

1986- Tax Reform Act of 1986-IRC 468B created  <--Congress involved in this

1988- Congress amends IRC 130 to permit receipients f periodic payments to have rights greater than that of a general creditor. ( see Pub. L. 100-647, 102 Stat. 3342, Title VII, § 6079(b)(1)). Also see H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 1104, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. at II-171(1988).