A structured settlement is an agreement that follows your winning of a lawsuit, which supposes that you are going to get the sum you've been settled to in periodic installments. That happens when the defendant losing the lawsuit to you as a plaintiff is in financial impossibility to pay you the whole sum at once, therefore you'll have to go for such a structured settlement annuity if you want to ever see that money in your bank account.

If you have a structured settlement, you can use it for obtaining a large sum of money paid in advance, if you are in real need for cash. You can do this by selling your structured settlement aither fully or partially to a broker or to somebody else, who would agree to pay you that big sum you need, which however is less than what you'd get if you didn't trtade your structured settlement and waited to cash in the annuities.

If you don't want to sell it, or if you can't find a buyer for your structured settlement, you can use it for getting a loan. The mechanism is mainly the same: a provider is paying you a big amount of money, then waits to get his money back from your future annuities. Overall, he pays you less than he'd get in the long run. On the other hand, you get your cash, you get out of the financial trouble that made you seek for a structured settlement loan, but you'll have to pay taxes on the whole amount, in the year you get it.

Generally speaking, a structured settlement loan has many positives, the main one being that you get most of your money in advance, without having to wait for such a long time, or to get it in small chunks you'd spend on foolish, small things.

The best idea, if you can, is to get a pre-settlement loan, which ia a loan you take before your trial case ends, based on the amount that you're going to receive if you win the lawsuit. This is a sweet deal, because if you lose the case, you don't have to pay back the loan. I suppose there's a law that regulates this situation, so perhaps the lender is getting the money back from insurance companies instead of your structured settlement loan repay.