The answer — just like many other answers in the law is — it depends.

A personal injury settlement can be protected up to a certain amount of money with its own personal injury exemption and sometimes additional settlement or court awarded funds can be protected with leftover “wildcard” exemption.  This means that the amount of exemptions available to apply against the award or settlement amount is going to be key. We will be able to protect some of it, maybe even all of it in some settlements, with the following caveat: If you have a fairly large settlement coming your way from a personal injury case some, your creditors may get paid some or all of the debt owed them with our office protecting as much as we can given the available exemptions. The bottom line is: We can protect some amount of the award or settlement from your personal injury case.  In some instances we can protect it all.  In other cases we can protect some portion of it even when you are going to have to pay some of it into your bankruptcy case for payment to your creditors.

Read our comprehensive article on this subject matter and contact us if we can help you with your bankruptcy questions.