Pre-settlement funding in California.

If you live in California and you are waiting on an injury claim, a pre-settlement advance puts cash in your hands now against a portion of what that claim may eventually pay. It is not a loan. There is no credit check, no monthly payment, and if the claim recovers nothing you owe nothing. You do need an attorney handling it on contingency.

What follows is the California-specific part — the rules that change what your contract must contain, what can end your claim early, and what actually reaches your pocket at the end. None of it is legal advice. We fund claims; we do not practise law. Every question below is one for the attorney handling your case.

Most people know there is a two-year window. Far fewer know about the six-month one, and it is the one that ends cases.

• Two years for most injury claims. Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets the general personal injury limitation period at two years from the injury.
• Six months if a public entity is involved. Government Code section 911.2 generally requires a written claim to be presented to the public entity within six months. That means a city bus, a county vehicle, a school district, or a dangerous condition on public property can put you on a six-month clock rather than a two-year one. In Los Angeles, where Metro, the City, the County and LAUSD are plausible defendants in a great many cases, this catches people out constantly.
• Medical malpractice runs on its own clock. Code of Civil Procedure section 340.5 sets three years from the date of injury or one year from when you discovered it, whichever comes first. The one-year discovery limb is the one that surprises people.

Two follow-on traps on the government-claim route, both worth knowing because they are jurisdictional rather than procedural. Once a public entity formally rejects your claim in writing, Government Code section 945.6 generally gives you only six months from that rejection to file suit. And if you miss the original six-month presentation window, section 911.4 allows an application to present a late claim, but generally only within one year of accrual.

One more, because it catches families: the tolling that normally protects an injured minor under Code of Civil Procedure section 352 does not extend the government-claim deadline. A child injured on a school bus is on the same six-month clock as an adult.

Whether any of these applies to your claim, and how it is calculated, is a question for your attorney — there are tolling rules, discovery rules and exceptions that a summary like this cannot capture. The reason it is on a funding page at all is simple: a claim that has already lapsed cannot be funded, and a six-month deadline changes how quickly everything has to move.

California follows pure comparative fault. Your recovery is reduced by your own share of responsibility, but being partly at fault does not by itself bar you. Even a plaintiff found mostly responsible can recover the remaining percentage.

This matters for funding in a way that is easy to miss. In states with a 50% bar, a disputed-fault case is close to unfundable, because one adverse finding takes the recovery to zero. In California the same case has a reduced but real expected value, which is why disputed-fault California claims are more often fundable than the same facts elsewhere. It also means underwriting cares a great deal about your likely fault percentage, not just about who was at fault.

The number your attorney negotiates is not the number you take home. Three California-specific rules sit in between, and they are the reason we underwrite conservatively here.

• The uninsured-driver rule. Civil Code section 3333.4 restricts the recovery of non-economic damages — pain and suffering — in certain motor vehicle cases, including where the injured driver was uninsured at the time. If it applies, it can remove a large part of a claim's value while leaving the medical bills intact. Ask your attorney early whether it applies to you, because it changes the shape of the case.
• Hospital liens are capped at half. Civil Code section 3045.4 provides that a hospital's lien cannot exceed 50 percent of what is due under the judgment or settlement after prior liens are paid. It still comes out before you do, but it cannot swallow the whole thing.
• Health plan reimbursement is capped lower. Civil Code section 3040 generally caps a health care service plan's lien at one third of the money due you when you are represented by an attorney, and one half when you are not — one of the few places in California law where having a lawyer is worth a fixed, statutory amount. Medi-Cal has its own limit under Welfare and Institutions Code section 14124.78, which prevents the state recovering more than you do after fees and costs.
• What medical damages are worth. California limits recoverable past medical damages by reference to amounts actually paid or incurred rather than the sticker price on the bill. Your attorney will explain how that plays out on your file.
• Non-economic damages are several, not joint. Under Civil Code section 1431.2, adopted as Proposition 51, each defendant is liable only for its own share of pain-and-suffering damages, while economic damages can still be joint. With multiple defendants, that changes what is realistically collectable.

Every one of these narrows the pot that a funding advance is eventually repaid from. That is exactly why a responsible funder advances only a modest fraction of a conservative estimate — over-funding a California claim is how a plaintiff reaches disbursement with nothing left of their own settlement.

A claim is worth what somebody can pay. In California the practical ceiling is very often the at-fault driver's policy, and the statutory floor for that policy is low.

California's minimum auto liability limits rose on January 1, 2025 to $30,000 per person, $60,000 per accident, and $15,000 property damage, under Senate Bill 1107, the Protect California Drivers Act. That was the first increase in decades — the old floor was 15/30/5. They are scheduled to rise again in 2035.

Thirty thousand dollars does not go far against a surgery. Which is why, in a great many California cases, the real recovery runs through your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. Insurance Code section 11580.2 requires UM coverage to be included in a California auto policy unless you signed a written waiver declining it — so check your own declarations page before assuming there is nothing there. Many people who think they have no claim do have one.

When we underwrite a California motor vehicle claim, available coverage is usually the binding constraint, not the severity of the injury. It is the most common reason a badly-hurt claimant gets a smaller offer than they expected.

The process is the same one described on how it works, with two California wrinkles. Your attorney's written acknowledgment is not a courtesy here — under the Act, a California agreement without it is void. And if we negotiate with you in a language other than English, you are entitled to the contract in that language as well as English.