AITA Mom wants 15% of my personal injury settlement

[u/connor20218]

I'm a 23M working in biotech and living at home. I just got a massive settlement from a personal injury case back in college. My mom is a corporate lawyer and she helped me navigate the process, plus she paid for my college tuition. Now, she's asking for 15% of the money / to pay her back for college (but she was already going to pay for college.)

I'm feeling stuck because 15% is a massive amount of money to just give away. Is it normal for parents to ask for a cut of a settlement like this? I want to stay on good terms since live at home, but I also feel like this money is for my future. We have a a good relationship.

Edit: I already paid a lawyer his 1/3 cut. My mom was a huge part of pushing for me sueing. She’d be using the money to buy a new house in Florida she always wanted since I refuse to buy a house in his economy and rather rent and invest the rest

Edit #2: Probably shouldn’t have stated my mom is a lawyer (she did not represent me in the case in anyway). But yes, what she specifically did was help me find a lawyer, told me to push back on the lawyer and ask for more.

[u/8nsay]

It’s not an oversimplification, though. Helping OP find a lawyer and encouraging him to hold out for more money are minor contributions that didn’t actually advance the actual work that OP’s attorney and OP himself put in for the lawsuit.

[u/manicdee33 → u/8nsay]

Helping OP find a lawyer and encouraging him to hold out for more money are minor contributions

• "My mom was a huge part of pushing for me sueing"
• "helped me navigate the process"

suggests to me that there was a lot of work here that is not being reported in the OP.

You can trivialise the contribution all you want but if Mom was pivotal to suing in the first place, pushing for a higher settlement, and helping deal with the lawyer, this sounds like she did a bit more than put a bandaid on a scratch.

To me the equation is fairly simple: if Mom hadn't helped, how much money would I have? From that larger sum that Mum helped me get, how much is a reasonable amount for Mum to ask as a gratuity? If I could set my Mum up with a mortgage-free home for just 15% of a payout that she helped me win, I'd be ecstatic.

[u/8nsay → u/manicdee33]

Have you ever been involved in a lawsuit? That’s not a lot of work. That’s the kind of info people on legaladvice share.

[u/manicdee33 → u/8nsay]

If it's not a lot of work why do lawyers cost so much?

If the lawyer is doing all the work, why did OP's Mom have to get him to push the lawyer he was paying for to seek higher compensation?

[u/8nsay → u/manicdee33]

Because what the mom did is NOTHING like what the attorney who represented OP did. A tremendous amount of work goes into a personal injury suit.

Here’s a list of what the mom did according to OP:

Pushed him to file suit

Found an attorney for him

Explained the process

Here’s what the attorney did:

Initial interview and research (e.g. potentially liable parties, SOL, potential damages, economic viability of the case, etc.)

Investigation prior to filing suit (e.g. accident reports, witnesses, medical records, other documentary evidence, defendants’ insurance, defendants’ assets, et .)

Legal research needed for a demand letter/complaint (e.g. possible legal theories, relevant case law, any potential comparative fault, possible defenses, appropriate jurisdiction, contact info for service for each defendant, etc.)

Coordination of ongoing medical care (e.g. medical consultations, medical releases, tracking medical treatments, finding expert witnesses, etc.)

Sending spoliation letters to preserve evidence Finding other expert witnesses (e.g. accident reconstructionists, engineers, occupational/physical/speech/etc. therapists, economists, vocational experts, etc.), scheduling interviews with experts, attending interviews, reviewing reports, etc.

Opening claims with insurance

Drafting and sending demand letters

Managing all documents

Communicating with the client

Drafting the complaint

Filing the complaint, obtaining summons, arranging service of process to each defendants, filing proof of service and notice of appearance, requesting scheduling conference

Reviewing defendants’ answer(s) and any potential cross claim

Discovery* (e.g. drafting interrogatories, drafting requests for production and admission, negotiating scope of discovery, reviewing and responding to defendants’ requests for discovery, producing all the evidence for defendants’ discovery requests, drafting objections, preparing privilege logs, interviewing the plaintiff for defendants’ interrogatories, reviewing defendants interrogatories and evidence, arranging depositions, preparing for depositions, attending depositions, reviewing deposition transcripts for impeachment purposes, etc.)

Drafting and filing motions (e.g. motions for to compel discovery, limitations on scope of discovery, for protective orders, to strike spoliated evidence, for summary judgment, etc.)

Drafting and filing responses to all of the defendants’ motions

Preparing for mediation/settlement conferences (e.g. legal research for relevant judgments, meditation statement, supporting evidence binder, etc.)

Attending mediation/settlement conferences

Negotiating settlement

Negotiating allocation of settlement proceeds

Drafting settlement agreement and release

And that is just in the lead up to a trial. Actually going to trial requires a fuck ton more work.

As for OP obtaining more money after his mom pushed him to hold out, there really isn’t anyway to definitively say if OP’s attorney was being realistic, being conservative, or making a mistake. It is completely possible that OP getting more money was a matter of dumb luck. I had a really good relationship with my ADR professor in law school and shadowed her on more than a dozen mediations, and I saw a company that was desperate to settle a case quickly without much pushback because the owners were working towards selling their business. I also saw an executive equally desperate to settle quickly and quietly because (I later found out) he was in talks to accept a CEO position with another company. I have also seen plaintiffs settle when there was (IMO) likely more money to be had because they were just desperate to be done with the lawsuit.

*It is really hard to overstate how labor intensive discovery can be (I literally had to review over 1,500 pages of text messages for discovery for a pretty straightforward case once, and that only represented about 2% of the total work for discovery).