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>> NATIONS: We can protect your benefits and still get you the full recovery of your settlement. You need to advise your attorney as to every type of
government benefit that you're receiving because some types of government benefits will be waived if you are paid in a lump sum. That means if you
receive your settlement in a transvaginal mesh case in one big check and you are receiving certain types of government benefits, the governmental
agency will cut of those benefits. However, here's a very important however, there is a law that provides that you can receive your benefits from
the government and receive your settlement from your transvaginal mesh case without offsetting each other. There are fundamentally two ways to avoid
losing your benefits. Number one is called a spin down. So if you take the money form your settlement, suppose your settlement, just pick a number,
suppose your settlement is $50,000 and you've got $50,000 in debt - your mortgage, your car, whatever debt, credit cards - if you receive your
$50,000 cash settlement and you spend the entire amount before the first of the month, then that's called a spin down and that will not affect the
benefits that you will receive on the first of the month. The other way is through the formation of a special needs trust. The special needs trust is
a device that was created specifically for the purpose of protecting your governmental benefits and simultaneously letting you receive your
settlement money in full. You place the money into a special needs trust, which is a simple device. And it has some restrictions on it but the
restrictions are very few.
>> TALLON: One additional item that we face with regard to governmental benefits and to governmental assistance is whether or not their past medical
costs that were covered by the government would have to be reimbursed and that is something that we deal with on a day-to-day basis and we have
specialists that will negotiate any potential ability for the government to go obtain funds from the drug company, essentially, who is paying the
settlement, for costs that were incurred or damages that were incurred by our clients. So, in short, your personal injury, the government does not
want to benefit from. They don't want your taxes, they want to leave your funds for the injury that was caused to your body, your person, to you
as best as they can.