§ 139.101.Written Offer Required

Two formal requirements, both aimed at making sure the offer reaches the person it concerns.

An offer of structured settlement made after a suit to which this chapter applies has been filed must be made in writing and presented to the attorney for the claimant.

The writing requirement is about complexity. A structured settlement is not a number — it is a schedule of payments over years or decades, with a present value, a funding arrangement, and terms about what happens on death. None of that can be conveyed in a conversation.

Presenting it to the attorney rather than the claimant ensures it arrives with someone equipped to evaluate it, and that is what the next section builds on: the attorney who receives the offer owes duties in passing it along.

The timing condition confines the section to offers made after filing. A pre-suit offer is outside the chapter, which fits the scope provision’s reference to a suit.

The section says nothing about what the offer must contain, beyond being in writing. It does not require disclosure of present value, the identity of the annuity issuer, or the cost of funding — information a claimant would need to compare a structure against a lump sum.

That gap is filled, if at all, by the attorney’s advisory duty in the section that follows rather than by any obligation on the offeror.

The chapter provides no sanction for non-compliance, so an offer made orally is not thereby void — the consequence, if any, lies in the professional obligations of the lawyers involved.