The tax advantages of structured legal fees, the Liberty Life program

In this week’s edition of Speaking of Settlements Mark Wahlstrom, the host of The Settlement Channel and the nations leading expert on structured legal fees, continues his month long series on structured legal fees, or structured attorney fees, by looking at the Liberty Life program.

Liberty Life is a subsidiary of the well known multi-line casualty group, Liberty Mutual Group, and is one of the leaders in both taxable and non-taxable structured settlements. As a result of this expertise in both areas of structures, Liberty is in the unique position of being one of only two major life markets that allow lawyers to structure their legal fees on both taxable and non-taxable damage cases.

As you will learn in the broadcast, Liberty Life allows for a wide range of options on their structured legal fees, among them are:

• It is the position of Liberty Life Assurance Company of Boston to use a non-qualified assignment on all legal fee structures, thus they utilize an NQAR as their assignment document.
• They will write stand-alone attorney fees arising from both qualified and non-qualified settlements.  The attorney fee structure must be written into the settlement agreement.
• Payment modes permitted are the same as standard periodic payments with the exception of Joint & Survivor.
• Rated ages are not available for attorney.
• Commuted value at death is available for attorney.
• Beneficiary changes are allowed for the attorney if included in the settlement agreement.
• The payee may be the law firm and the beneficiary would be the successor of the firm.
• Required documentation includes: W-4P if withholding is requested, a W-9 if paying the law firm, and a Hold Harmless Agreement.

Also, as a point of clarification on the video please note that in the video Mark mentions a few items that could use greater amplification, among them is that Liberty Mutual Group has been in business since 1912, rather then the “decades or hundreds of years” states.

Also, BARCO is not a subsidiary of Liberty Life, but a special purpose corporation based in Barbados, that Liberty Life works with or uses to facilitate non-qualified assignments, such as those used in structured legal fees.

With those points tucked away in the back of your mind, jump into today’s Speaking of Settlements and learn how Liberty Life works with lawyers all over the country to assist them in structuring their legal fees on a wide range of cases. If you want to learn more about structured legal fee cases, tax and retirement planning for lawyers and  what your options are, feel free to contact the annuity expert, Mark Wahlstrom, at www.wahlstromandassociates.com