You're driving east on the Long Island Expressway in heavy Tuesday traffic when a box truck plows into your rear quarter panel at 55 mph. You walk away with a sore shoulder and a torn shirt — until twelve hours later in a Nassau County ER, your blood pressure crashes and a CT scan shows your spleen is hemorrhaging into your abdomen. Or you're a steamfitter on a Long Island City renovation when a load of pipe drops two stories and pins you against a column, rupturing your left

Your spouse suffered a spinal cord injury in a Long Island Expressway crash. Two years later, the defense calls with a $9 million offer. Your lawyer says you can take it as a single check on Monday — or you can structure part of it into tax-free monthly payments for the rest of your spouse's life. That choice will shape your family's finances for the next forty years. Structured settlements in New York catastrophic injury cases are one of the most powerful — and most misunder