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.

You will also see this settlement called the Los Angeles Child Victims Act Settlement Program - that is its official program name, used on payment notices and by the claims processor. The news calls it the LA County sex abuse settlement; your paperwork calls it the LA Child Victims Act Settlement Program; both refer to the same $4.0 billion settlement described on this page.

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.

Claims involving County juvenile halls and probation camps are the largest group in the settlement: roughly 7,500 of the more than 11,000 claims, spanning facilities operated by the County from 1959 through 2023.

Every juvenile hall and probation camp claim is scored individually under the court-supervised Allocation Protocol - your points reflect your claim’s documented factors, not which facility it involves. Payment then follows the standard structure: five annual cycles, each with its own point dollar value, described in the allocation section above.

How juvenile hall settlement payments are paid

Cycle 1 notices show your gross amount, the 0.6% common benefit deduction, the 20% healthcare lien reserve, and your net payment - the line-by-line notice walkthrough covers each row. If you would rather not wait for future cycles, the same court-approved options apply: a transfer of some or all remaining payments, reviewed by a judge who must find it in your best interest.

The court filings organize the County’s AB 218 cases into three groups, and claimants in community discussions are often unsure which one their claim belongs to. The groups have different settlements, different funds, and different trustees, so knowing yours tells you which paperwork and timeline apply.

Group A is the $4.0 billion Master Settlement Agreement cohort - more than 11,000 claims, including the roughly 7,500 probation camp and juvenile hall claims, plus MacLaren Hall and foster care. Its fund is the “LA County AB218 Settlement Fund,” established by Judge Riff’s order of December 11, 2025, with BrownGreer PLC as trustee. Judge Riff keeps continuing and exclusive jurisdiction over the settlement (order, pp. 2-3). Everything else on this page - the five payment cycles, the points system, the payment notices - describes Group A.

Group B is the separate settlement of up to $828 million reached October 17, 2025, resolving 414 claims across three lead cases before Judges Riff, Seigle, and Lu. Its fund has a different trustee: Simpluris, appointed November 17, 2025. If your paperwork comes from Simpluris rather than BrownGreer, you are a Group B claimant, and the Group A cycle schedule on this page does not control your payment - your own notices do.

Group C is the AB 218 cases that have not settled and are still being litigated against the County. In February 2026 the court appointed five firms as liaison counsel to coordinate them: ACTS, Becker Law Group, Gould Grieco & Hensley, James Harris Law, and McNicholas & McNicholas. If your case has not settled, there is no payment schedule yet - your attorney is your source for status.

The fastest way to confirm your group: look at who sends your notices (BrownGreer and the LA Child Victims Act Settlement Program mean Group A; Simpluris means Group B), or ask your attorney. The underlying court filings for all three groups are in our settlement document library.

You may have seen news coverage about fraud allegations in the settlement. Here is the program-level picture as of July 31, 2026, so you know what it does and does not mean for a legitimate claim.

When the County announced the second settlement in October 2025, it also announced heightened anti-fraud provisions in the claims process. In November 2025, the Los Angeles County District Attorney opened an investigation into potentially fraudulent claims. On June 10, 2026, the District Attorney applied ex parte to intervene and stay all settlement payments through December 31, 2026, while that investigation continued - the DA’s actual application is in our document library (application, p. 2).

On June 26, 2026, the court declined to impose that six-month freeze, ruling that the decision to move forward with the settlement belongs to the County and the claimants who signed it, not to the District Attorney’s office. Payments did not stop: by late July 2026, more than $700 million in first-round payments was beginning to distribute to claimants, and further hearings remain on calendar while the investigation continues.

What this means for a legitimate claimant: the fraud review is aimed at screening claims, not stopping the settlement. Your claim still moves through the same verification steps described in your notice, and the payment cycle framework on this page still applies. If your claim is documented and verified, the fraud review is not a reason to expect your payment to be reduced.

What to watch: the District Attorney’s investigation remains open, and further court dates are expected. We update this page as rulings land, so check the date stamps on each section.

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. Both appointments are set out in the Master Settlement Agreement, page 9, and BrownGreer’s trustee role in the December 11, 2025 fund order.

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 program filed its own worked example of this notice in court - Exhibit 20, hosted in our document library - showing a hypothetical 66.5-point claim walked through every deduction line.

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. If you want to read what you will be asked to sign before it arrives, the blank Individual Settlement Agreement template is in our document library.

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.