Can You Sell Just Part of Your Structured Settlement?

Yes — you can sell just a portion of your structured settlement payments and keep the rest coming to you on schedule. In fact, many of our prior customers choose a partial sale, not a full one.

If you've been putting off looking into this because you assumed it was all-or-nothing, that assumption is the single biggest misconception I run into after 12 years in this industry.

What a Partial Sale Actually Means

A structured settlement is really just a series of individual future payments, monthly checks, annual lump sums, or some combination of both, depending on how your original settlement was structured.

A partial sale means you're selling the rights to some of those future payments — say, the next 10 years of monthly checks, or one specific lump-sum payment coming in 2030, while every other payment in your schedule keeps arriving exactly as it always has.

Nothing about the payments you keep changes. Your insurance company or annuity provider still owns those obligations and still issues those payments directly to you, on the same schedule you've always had. You're only ever selling the specific payments named in your court petition, nothing more.

Why Many People Choose Partial Over Full

A full sale makes sense when someone needs a large amount of cash and is comfortable giving up the income stream entirely. But for many of the people I talk to, the actual need is more specific: a down payment on a house, paying off high-interest debt, covering a medical bill, or funding a business.

A partial sale lets you solve that specific problem while keeping your long-term financial safety net intact. You get the lump sum you need now, and your structured settlement keeps doing exactly what it was designed to do for the payments you didn't sell.

This could especially be important for an individual who has an immediate need for cash now to solve that problem, yet still relies on a portion of the income for living expenses. You may have the ability to keep what you need, in order to secure the income needed month-to-month, while satisfying the larger need by accessing cash now.

How a Partial Sale Works, Step by Step

The process is the same legal framework as a full sale, just scoped to fewer payments:

1. You identify which payments you want to sell. This could be a stretch of monthly payments, a single upcoming lump sum, or a mix.

2. You review and sign a purchase agreement for only those payments.

3. A judge reviews and approves the sale. Every structured settlement transfer, partial or full, requires court approval under your state's Structured Settlement Protection Act (SSPA). The judge's job is specifically to confirm the sale is in your best interest, which is exactly why this process exists: to protect you, not to slow you down.

4. Once approved, you receive your lump sum, and your remaining, unsold payments continue on their original schedule without interruption.

Can You Sell More Later If You Need To?

Yes. If your situation changes again down the road, you can go through this same process for another portion of your remaining payments. Each sale is its own separate transaction requiring its own court approval.

Many people end up completing multiple transactions over the life of their settlement as their needs change or new opportunities present themselves years later, rather than one all-or-nothing decision made under pressure.

Does a Partial Sale Get You a Worse Rate?

Not necessarily. The discount rate will be dependent on numerous factors such as how close/far the payments you are willing to sell are, the rating of the Insurance Company, and applicable rates at the time of sale. In many cases you are able to get a lower funding rate when selling a larger aggregate total, and a lower rate means a higher valuation on your present day value.

The Bottom Line

You don't have to choose between "keep everything" and "sell everything." If you have a specific financial need right now, a partial sale is very likely the right tool, you solve today's problem in cash while your remaining structured settlement payments keep arriving exactly as scheduled, for as long as you decide to keep them.

If you're not sure how much of your settlement makes sense to sell, that's exactly the conversation worth having before you commit to anything. Reach out for a free, no-obligation quote, and we'll walk through what a partial sale could look like specifically for your payment schedule.

— Anthony Cioppa, Founder & President, American Annuity Funding