2 March 2016
 Categories: Law, Blog

What happens to your personal injury settlement if you get it while you are in the middle of a divorce? You may feel like your soon-to-be-ex doesn't really deserve any of the settlement, especially if your spouse was less than supportive during your recovery. This is what you should know.

How do the courts decide if a personal injury settlement should be divided?

There simply is no one rule that the courts are going to follow. Unless your spouse is willing to forgo his or her entitlement to any of the settlement, the individual circumstances of your case will have to be examined (and probably argued about in court) in order to come to a reasonable division of the funds.

There are a number of things that the court is likely to consider:

• Was your spouse part of the lawsuit from the beginning or did you begin it on your own?

• What economic injuries did your spouse suffer as part of the accident?

• Did your injuries lead to expenses that depleted household funds?

• Did you spouse suffer emotionally as well?

• Did the accident lead to your divorce?

• Is any of the award for your spouse's loss of consortium?

• Is any of the money designated for the care of your children, due to your ongoing physical limitations?

Even in one of the nine states that have community property laws (where each spouse is automatically entitled to ½ of any assets received during the marriage), a personal injury award isn't that easy to divide up because the money that comes from a personal injury award is designed to compensate you for different things. One of the biggest things that may affect how much you have to share the proceeds with your spouse is how much of the award is related to economic damages and how much is purely for your pain and suffering.

The court may decide to make you share the part of your award that is tied to your economic damages based on the theory that your spouse shared in those losses with you. The court may not be inclined, however, to make you share the part of your award that is for pain and suffering since you were the one who did all of the suffering.

Should you dispute the division of a personal injury settlement?

However, before you decide how hard you want to fight the division of a settlement, consider this: the more assets that you have to your name, the more that your spouse can argue that you should be able to afford to either make alimony payments (if you're the primary wage earner) or do without (if you've relied on your spouse's income over the years).  

For more information, discuss the situation with your attorney in detail. For a divorce attorney, contact a lawyer such as Mira Staggers White.