colorado personal injury settlement

[regalar]

Hello everybody, need help bad.
I live in colorado and I thought personal injury claims were all exempt. Here is the problem me and my wife are recieving periodic settlement checks for abestos law suit. We hate to loose them so we looked up the exemptions in Colorado and thougth they would be exempt. To make the story short we paid our attorney for a chapter 7 and he told us we might loose the settlement checks. We are both on SSDI and LTD, the house is in my name with upside down mortgage that i was just approved for a in house mod with BOA, don't know if we should take a chance on loosing this, any sugestions?

[tcreegan]

Hi regalar,

Fellow Coloradoan here, way up north.

Need some #s to get a handle on this; what is the monthly including the settlement $$? What is the income w/o settlement $ ?

Here is something that might be relevant/run past your lawyer:

Disability benefits to $200 per month; lump sum, entire amount exemp CRS 10-16-212

Personal injury recoveries, unless debt related to injury CRS 13-54-102(1)(n)

I think you might even be able to exempt some of the SSDI

Glad you found us, lots of good folks around here to help out!

Tom in Colo

[Peeps]

Hi regalar,

I'm also in CO and have been looking closely into SSDI and Mods as they relate to BKs. The mod should be ok if you file - just make sure to take steps to stay current on the payments. The SSDI monthly payments are exempt in CO. Lump sum payments can get more tricky but if you've avoided comingling the funds that really helps. SSDI is considered in your monthly income/expenses so depending on how your numbers work out, there could be some complexities. Long term disability and the personal injury settlements have (IMHO) some pretty low exemption amounts. I'm not entirely sure, but if your attorney can show your monthly expenses exceed your monthly income for a negative DMI, then you've got some extra leverage. At least from what I can tell.

I believe there are organizations that buy-out structured settlements. I'm sure they take a cut, of course. If there's risk of losing the settlement checks, maybe your attorney could weigh-in on the possibility of a buy-out, spending the money down on legitimate expenses, and then possibly pursuing a BK down the road if necessary. There's nothing wrong with planning a bankruptcy. Just an idea, not sure if it holds much water. Best of luck.

[regalar]

Thanks everybody, the stress of the this is killing us. I am waiting to talk to my lawyer Wensday, I want to know when I will find out if this settlement is exempt or not. I do not want to get to the 341 to find out this, if I have to use this to pay everybody back i will just do it myself, i don't want to extra money for someone to take care of it. I know about the personal injury recoveries being exempt, just don't understand why it is such a big deal. The stress about this is killing us here. I don't have anything for anybody to take, just the house which is upside down, the only good thing is the paymnet went down 300 a month

[tcreegan]

Hi again regalar,

...take a deep breath....hold it....slowly exhale....relax....

Your lawyer should take care of you, hang in there!

Tom in Colo

ps: did you have the cold wind all day today? Driving me nuts up here....

[regalar]

same here can't stand the cold

[regalar]

Back again, well lawyer checked it out and all he can say "probably ok", worry, worry, worry, don't know if i can trust him. My lawyer on the personal injury claim is from TX and she told me it would not affect my bankruptcy in Colorado. You think that he would know more about this in Colorado than her. Getting ready to file next week and I have already paid him. All I wanted was yes or know and all i he said was probably.

RR