It should be no surprise that self-insured defendants (or annuity insurers representing those defendants) would try to do everything possible to minimize their cost of annuity products needed to guarantee periodic payments that are to be paid to their plaintiffs.

No plaintiff can fault a defendant for trying to keep his/her costs down to the absolute minimum possible -as long as it does not result in the plaintiff getting the short end of the stick.

One of the oldest tricks in the book that many defendants try to pull on plaintiffs is to somehow make their cost of providing those periodic payments appear to be larger than the actual. There are many (underhanded) ways that some (not all) defendants employ in their pursuit of inflating their "apparent" cost of financing your structured settlement payments.

First of all, it is fundamentally wrong on the part of your attorney to even consider accepting a structured settlement agreement that is crafted by a structured settlements broker that is loyal to the opposing party -i.e. the defendant.

If your attorney has not already acquired services of an independent and certified structured settlement broker that works for you, and only you -neither for the defendant, nor for the casualty insurers -you should simply walk away from it. Considering that there is usually no added cost to you or to your attorney for hiring an independent structured settlement broker that represents you -the plaintiff, there is no good reason why you should not have the benefit of having a professional structured settlement broker representing you.

Having said that, it is not really that difficult to see if your are being talked into accepting a structured settlement agreement that may not be in your best interest.