Understanding Your LA County Settlement Payments

Los Angeles County approved a $4.0 billion settlement on April 29, 2025, resolving more than 11,000 claims of childhood sexual abuse at County juvenile halls, probation camps, MacLaren Hall, and foster care placements. It is the largest sexual abuse settlement in United States history.

The claims span 1959 through 2023 and break down into roughly 7,500 probation camp and juvenile hall claims, 2,600 MacLaren Hall claims, and 600 foster care claims. MacLaren Hall, later called the MacLaren Children’s Center, was the County-run children’s shelter that closed in 2003.

These cases became possible because of California Assembly Bill 218, the 2019 law that revived previously time-barred childhood sexual abuse claims against public entities and extended the deadline to file. The lead case is Jane Doe 1 v. County of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. 21STCV20949.

In October 2025, Los Angeles County announced a second settlement of up to $828 million resolving more than 400 additional AB 218 cases. That agreement includes enhanced claim verification provisions, including written factual summaries signed under penalty of perjury and independent claim review by a retired judge.

The County’s announcements of the first settlement and the second settlement are on record at lacounty.gov, and CBS Los Angeles covered the unanimous Board of Supervisors approval in April 2025. The rest of this page focuses on what claimants ask most: when the money arrives, how the amount is set, and what your options are.

Los Angeles County is paying $4.0 billion across five annual installments of $800 million, deposited into a Qualified Settlement Fund on or about January 15 of each year from 2026 through 2030. Claimants are then paid in payment cycles that follow each deposit.

A Qualified Settlement Fund is a court-supervised trust, established under Treasury Regulation 1.468B-1, that receives settlement money from a defendant and distributes it to claimants under court oversight. The County pays the fund; the fund pays you.

Amounts in this settlement are set by a point-based allocation. A point-based allocation is a claim valuation method in which the claims administrator assigns each claim a number of points based on documented factors, and settlement dollars are distributed in proportion to points.

Two court-appointed professionals run this machinery. The Honorable Lou Meisinger (Ret.), a retired judge, serves as claims administrator and applies the Allocation Protocol that scores each claim. BrownGreer PLC, a national claims administration firm, serves as claims processor and trustee of the settlement fund - they issue the notices, resolve healthcare liens, and send the money.

Your score arrives as a Total Points Assignment, communicated in its own notice before payment notices go out. Each payment cycle then multiplies your points by that cycle’s point dollar value, which depends on the installment amount and the total points across all claimants.

In the Los Angeles Child Victims Act Settlement Program, the Payment Cycle 1 point dollar value is $1,010.94 per point. So a claimant with 50 points has a Cycle 1 gross payment of about $50,547, and a claimant with 200 points about $202,188, before the deductions described below.

One precision that clears up a lot of confusion: $1,010.94 is the Cycle 1 value, not what a point is worth in total. Each of the five payment cycles has its own point dollar value, set when that cycle’s installment and the program-wide point totals are known, so your total per-point recovery is the sum of five cycle values that have not all been published yet. Per-point figures circulating in community discussions vary so widely because they mix up a single cycle’s value, a projected five-cycle total, and net-versus-gross numbers. When you compare notes with anyone, always ask which cycle and whether the figure is before or after deductions.

If you believe your points assignment is wrong, raise it through your attorney, or directly with the claims processor if you are unrepresented. Do it promptly - allocation questions are much harder to fix after payments begin moving.

The document that actually controls your money is the Point-Based Allocation Payment Notice mailed by the claims processor. Cycle 1 notices are dated from late June 2026 onward, and every one follows the same anatomy.

The notice identifies you by name and Settlement Program ID (SPID), names your primary counsel if you have one, and then walks through six numbered rows that turn your points into a net payment. Here is what each row means.

Row 1 - Total Points Assignment. Your score under the Allocation Protocol. This was set before the payment notice and carries through all five cycles.

Row 2 - Gross payment. Your points multiplied by the cycle’s point dollar value ($1,010.94 in Cycle 1). This is the number before anything comes out.

Row 3 - Common benefit deduction of 0.6%. Required by Section 6.c of the Master Settlement Agreement and by order of the Los Angeles Superior Court, this funds the Plaintiffs’ Common Benefit Expense Fund that pays the shared costs of running the program. Per the notice itself, this deduction is court ordered and cannot be appealed or challenged.

Row 4 - The 20% healthcare lien reserve. Cycle 1 payment notices in the LA County settlement hold back 20% of the gross payment as a reserve for potential Medicare and California Medi-Cal liens. Section 6.j of the Master Settlement Agreement makes each claimant responsible for their own medical expense and lien obligations, and it bars any payment until Medicare and Medi-Cal reimbursement claims are resolved.

The reserve is the mechanism that lets the rest of your money move while that lien work happens. It is used only to pay finalized healthcare liens connected to your compensated damages, and any excess is released back to you once the liens are resolved.

Row 5 - The $500 lien administration fee. A flat fee deducted for the claims processor’s work identifying, negotiating, and finalizing those healthcare liens.

Row 6 - Net payment. Gross, minus the 0.6% deduction, minus the 20% reserve, minus the $500 fee. This is what actually moves in Cycle 1 - but not until one more step.

That step is the release. Every claimant must sign Exhibit A, the Acknowledgement of Individual Settlement Agreement and Release, before payment issues. If you have a lawyer, the net payment goes to your law firm, which deducts attorney fees and case expenses under your retainer agreement and then pays you. If you are unrepresented, you sign Exhibit A on the program’s secure portal and a check is mailed to your address on file.

Quick Pay is an alternative payment track in the LA County settlement that pays a claimant’s full allocation from the County’s first installment rather than across five annual payment cycles. Claimants who signed a Quick Pay agreement traded the multi-year schedule for one resolution up front.

If you signed one, your paperwork and notices control your timing, and the five-cycle schedule on this page does not describe your claim. If you did not sign one, you are on the standard track: one payment per cycle, five cycles, through 2030.

Whether Quick Pay was available for your claim, and on what terms, was handled between claimants, their counsel, and the program. If you are unsure which track you are on, your attorney or your most recent notice will say.

LA County settlement payments compensate personal physical injuries and are excluded from federal income tax under Internal Revenue Code Section 104(a)(2). In plain English: the compensation itself is not income, and you do not pay federal income tax on it.

There is one narrow exception worth knowing. Money sitting in the Qualified Settlement Fund earns interest, and interest earned inside the fund is taxable when it is distributed to you. Your payment paperwork and year-end tax documents will separate the two.

Two follow-up questions come up constantly. First, the healthcare lien reserve: when unused reserve money is released back to you after your liens are resolved, it is the same compensation, arriving later - the release does not turn it into taxable income.

Second, selling payments does not change the tax character. If part of your allocation was set up as a structured settlement annuity and you later sell some or all of those payments through a court-approved transfer, the lump sum you receive generally keeps the same tax exclusion the payments had. Federal law (IRC Section 5891) requires court approval of transfers precisely to preserve that treatment.

State treatment generally follows the federal exclusion for physical injury compensation, and California conforms. Still, everyone’s facts differ - especially where liens, prior deductions for medical costs, or investment of the proceeds are involved - so review your situation with a tax professional. This page is general information, not tax advice.

A $4.0 billion obligation is roughly a tenth of the County’s annual budget, and governments cannot write a check that size from one year’s revenue. The County spreads the cost through annual budget appropriations and long-term financing, including judgment obligation bonds, with the County itself projecting settlement-related payments continuing for years beyond the last 2030 installment.

The five-installment structure is the compromise between that fiscal reality and claimants’ need for compensation: $800 million per year, every year, court supervised, into a fund whose only job is paying claimants. It is slower than anyone would like, and it is also contractually committed and enforceable, which one-time budget promises are not.

A structured settlement annuity election lets a claimant convert some or all of an allocation into scheduled future payments issued by a life insurance company instead of taking cash as it distributes. Claimants in this program may elect an annuity from their allocation.

People choose the election for real reasons: payments arrive on a schedule that cannot be spent all at once, the personal physical injury tax exclusion carries through to the annuity payments, and for younger claimants it can turn a settlement into years of dependable income.

The tradeoff is flexibility. An annuity’s schedule is fixed when it is created, and life is not. California law anticipates exactly this: an elected annuity can later be sold in part or in whole, but only through court approval under the state’s Structured Settlement Protection Act - which is the subject of the next section. If you are weighing the election, our annuity payments overview and California structured settlement page explain how the other side of that decision works.

A word for anyone second-guessing an earlier choice between a lump-sum resolution and the multi-year schedule: neither answer was wrong. A lump sum resolves everything at once; the installment track pays more slowly but keeps paying. What matters now is working the track you are on. The election is also not all-or-nothing - a claimant can structure part of an allocation and take the rest as it distributes, which is often the practical middle ground between security and access.

For many claimants, spreading payments over five years is the right outcome. For others, life does not wait - housing, medical needs, debt, or a fresh start can make money in 2029 worth far less than money now.

If your allocation was set up as a structured settlement annuity, California law gives you a regulated path: a court-approved transfer of some or all of your remaining payments in exchange for a lump sum. Every transfer goes in front of a judge under California Insurance Code Section 10139.5, and the judge must find the sale is in your best interest before it can happen.

That court review exists to protect you. So does this rule of ours: any quote worth considering states the discount rate in writing. If a buyer will not put the rate on paper, walk away.

You can also sell part of your payments and keep the rest. Partial transfers are common, and they are often the smarter move when you need a specific amount for a specific purpose. Run your schedule through our annuity payout calculator to see a realistic range before talking to anyone.