Life is full of changes why should a structured settlement be forever

Most home owners buy houses using 30-year mortgages only to refinance many years before the end of the mortgage term. Consumers sign up for long term life insurance life insurance policies which are intended to be in force for extended periods of time. But then they stop paying the premium and let their coverage lapse. Why? Because their lives change, their circumstances elsewhere. The point is that, at the outset, the initial long term commitment made perfect sense, and then as life moved on, a change made more sense. Each year between 3.5% and 7% of all life policies are allowed to lapse by the insured person. Circumstances change. Lives change. A person who received a structured settlement as compensation for an injury may want to enroll in college or job training and may decide selling structured settlement payments for cash now is the best way to pay for his or her education. Or an annuitant who received a structured settlement as the result of an injury may have the opportunity to buy or renovate a hous e to better suit his or her way of life. Selling a structured settlement for a lump sum of cash may be a prudent way to cover the down payment on a house. Or pay off a mortgage. Or to pay off taxes or to pay off credit card debts. Very few people actually sell structured settlement payments Out of the total outstanding amount of money currently held in structured settlement annuities - more than $80 billion - about $800 million to $1 billion is transferred on the secondary market each year. That means that only about 1-2% of structured settlement payments are sold each year. Only about 1% of structured settlements are sold or traded in the market place. Not a lot of people sell their structured settlement annuity payments. in fact, 99% of people do not sell structured settlement payments. Those who do choose to sell structured settlement payments typically do so because their circumstances have changed, and they need the cash for a specific reason (medical procedure, debt reduction, education, etc. ). The cas h is used as an escape valve, to help people reduce some of life's pressures so they can deal with a problem or an opportunity. Even the insurance companies who issue structured settlement annuities recognize that there needs to be an escape valve. Most insurance companies include death commutation riders when they create structured settlement annuities. These riders allow and estate to cash out the deceased person's structured settlement annuity - usually in order to pay estate taxes. In addition, two large insurance companies, Symetra Life insurance Company and Allstate Life insurance company, recognizes the need for an escape valve in other scenarios and will buy structured settlement annuity payments themselves.