§ 103.053.Annuity Compensation Generally; Standard Annuity Payments

The compensation is not handed over in one cheque. Most of it becomes an income stream.

Standard annuity payments are the default. A person entitled to compensation under Section 103.001(a) receives them unless the person elects the alternative payments in Section 103.0535.

The annuity is built on the prison and post-release figures. Its present value equals the amounts owed under Sections 103.052(a)(1) and (b) — the $80,000 and $25,000 components — and the child support component is not part of it.

Payments run in equal monthly installments for the claimant’s life. There is no term certain in the standard form; the payments track the life.

A five percent per annum interest rate is written into the statute, with the other actuarial factors left to the comptroller’s discretion.

The payments cannot be moved. They may not be accelerated, deferred, increased or decreased, which forecloses both a claimant’s request to cash out and any later attempt to trim the stream.

They cannot be sold or borrowed against either. No claimant — and no spouse or designated beneficiary receiving payments under Section 103.0535 — may sell, mortgage, encumber or anticipate the payments by assignment or otherwise.

That restriction is the point of the annuity. A lifetime income cannot be lost to a bad investment or bought cheap by a company offering cash today, and the ban on assignment is what makes it hold.

One exception exists, and Section 103.001(e) writes it: payments may be reduced to fund the health coverage the claimant elected.