Car accidents can be devastating and life-changing experiences, and even minor crashes can be costly and stressful. Regardless of the severity of your accident, an insurance settlement can help you seek medical treatment, address property damage, and ultimately move forward with your life.
Unfortunately, car accident claims aren’t always as quick and easy as they should be. If you haven’t seen any money from your insurance company, you’re probably wondering — why is my car accident settlement taking so long? Here’s a look at what might be causing the delay.
How Long Does the Average Car Accident Settlement Take?
As a general rule of thumb, car accidents with minor (or no) injuries tend to settle faster than those involving serious injury or death. Each case is different, but these are typical settlement timeframes:
- Accidents Involving Only Property Damage: A few weeks to a few months
- Accidents Involving Minor to Moderate Injuries: About six to nine months
- Accidents Involving Severe Injuries: Often a year or more
When you consult a car accident lawyer, they should be able to review the circumstances of your case and estimate how long it will take to receive compensation.
Reasons Why a Car Accident Settlement Make Take Longer
A settlement for a car accident is rarely delayed by a single factor. These are some of the reasons it may take longer than you think to receive compensation.
Liability Disputes
In some car accidents, there’s no question as to who was at fault. However, in many cases, there’s some level of ambiguity. Insurance companies will sometimes assign you an unfairly high percentage of fault when assessing the accident.
If this happens, your lawyer may need to dispute your liability before the case can even come close to settling.
Multiple Parties Involved
Determining percentages of fault and calculating settlement amounts is challenging enough when only two parties are involved in an accident. If a third driver, a rideshare company, or another party is part of your lawsuit, negotiating a settlement will take longer.
Seriousness of Injuries
The seriousness of your injuries is often the single biggest factor contributing to delayed settlements. Usually, personal injury lawyers will wait until your injuries are mostly healed before filing a lawsuit. They do this to make sure your settlement adequately covers medical care.
For example, imagine you get in a car accident and suffer major burns. You have medical bills totaling $15,000, and you settle the case quickly to pay for your treatment.
Now imagine that months later, you develop a serious infection related to those wounds that lands you in the hospital, and leads to skin grafts. This ultimately costs $100,000 to treat. Because you already settled your case, you can’t pursue the at-fault driver for additional treatment costs, which means you may have to pay another $85,000 out of pocket (depending on your health insurance situation).
Serious injuries also commonly result in some level of long-term disability. In many cases, you can recover compensation for that disability — but calculating the amount you should receive is no easy feat. Your car accident settlement lawyer may need to hire medical experts to submit their opinions to the court, which takes time. You may be unable to work, which means you’re losing wages and other forms of income or benefits.
Bad Faith Tactics
When an insurance company acts in bad faith, it acts illegally or unethically to avoid or delay claim payouts. Even if the insurer eventually pays your claim, it profits from the delay itself. The longer the insurance company holds onto your claim payout, the more interest it earns.
These are a few of the most common bad-faith tactics insurance companies use:
- Delaying a claim with no clear reason
- Denying a claim for a covered loss
- Refusing to thoroughly investigate the claim
- Misrepresenting policy coverage
- Misrepresenting the law
You should always remember that insurance companies prioritize their own best interests, and their primary goal is to maximize their profits. Many of them engage in bad faith tactics because they know their customers often have a limited understanding of insurance.
For example, imagine your insurance policy covers damage to your car in accidents where you are at fault. When you call to start a claim, the insurance agent reads you a portion of the policy and tells you it means that the policy won’t pay for repairs in accidents you cause. You might think that because the insurance agent is a professional, they must be correct.
The average person doesn’t deal with insurance companies on a daily basis, but car accident attorneys do. They are well aware of these tactics, and they can stand up for your rights against unethical insurers.
If your lawyer can prove that your insurance company acted in bad faith, you likely will receive compensation. However, the process can be a lengthy one. Attorneys will typically try to negotiate with insurance companies first, but if no settlement is reached, your lawyer may need to file a bad-faith claim.
Litigation
Ideally, your lawyer and the insurance company will be able to agree on a settlement amount before the case goes to trial. Litigation takes a significant amount of time, and there are more steps in the process than many people realize:
- Your lawyer files the lawsuit
- A copy of the lawsuit is served to the other party
- The other party responds to the lawsuit
- Both sides gather evidence and submit it to the court
- Both sides files motions regarding that evidence or the case itself
- Both sides agree on a jury
- The trial itself takes place
- The judge or jury reaches a verdict
These steps don’t usually happen in quick succession. There are often multiple hearings before the trial itself, and scheduling these hearings (and the trial) can be complicated. Courts tend to have very busy schedules, and in order to schedule a trial, you must find a date convenient to you, your lawyer, the insurance company’s lawyers, and the court.
Is a Settlement Still Possible if a Car Accident Case Goes to Trial?
Fortunately, if your case goes to trial, there is still a chance to settle it — as long as the parties agree on a settlement before a verdict is reached. Settling is often beneficial for both sides because it allows them to avoid the uncertainty that comes with a jury trial.
How Soon Do You Get Paid After Reaching a Settlement?
Reaching a settlement agreement can feel like a relief. However, you don’t receive the money instantly. In most cases, you must go through the following process:
- You sign the settlement agreement
- The insurance company sends a check to your lawyer
- Your lawyer deducts their fees from the settlement amount
- If you have medical liens or other outstanding bills, your lawyer uses the settlement money to pay them
- Your lawyer sends you your portion of the settlement
The entire process usually takes about 30 to 60 days. You can choose to be paid in a single lump sum or to receive payments over time in what’s called a structured settlement. Your attorney can discuss the pros and cons of each option and help you choose the best one for your situation.
Throughout your case, your lawyer should keep you updated and give you an idea of when you may receive your settlement money. And when your case is finally closed, you’ll be one step closer to moving on with your life.
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