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