was my daughter n laws lawyer entitled to 25% of my auto insurance policy?
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was my daughter n laws lawyer entitled to 25% of my auto insurance policy?
my son was killed as a pedestrian by a motorist. he had no insurance, however he lived with me for a year at the time. My daughter n law filed a wrongful death case against the driver, finding out there were no insurances for her. My vehichle insurance policy paid out 100,000.00 and her lawyer took 25% of it. We were getting this insurance whether we had a lawyer or not. The driver was found to have no other assets to sue for. I askd the lawyer if it was ok to go ahead and file a claim on my policy. He said it would not hurt his case , as he was continueing investigating her assets.
Asked on June 4, 2009 under Insurance Law, Oregon
Answers:
B. B., Member, New Jersey Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 15 years ago | Contributor
If I understand you correctly, your personal auto policy paid $100,000 as a death benefit for your son, as an additional insured, and your son's widow's attorney took $25,000 from that, without having done anything to bring in the insurance money.
I'm sure that there is a lot more to this situation than you could, or would want to, put into a question here. There are some ways this could be happening, that would be reasonable, and some that would make the lawyer's taking that money very questionable, but all I can tell you for certain is that it sounds like something worth looking into. For advice you can rely on, you need to have an attorney in your area review all the facts, and one place to find a lawyer is our website, http://attorneypages.com
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