§ 74.503.Court Order for Periodic Payments

The ordering provision, and the difference between its two subsections is the whole design.

At the request of a defendant or a claimant, the court shall order that medical, health care, or custodial services awarded be paid in whole or in part in periodic payments rather than by lump sum.

At the request of either, the court may order the same for future damages other than those services.

Shall for care costs, may for everything else. The reason is that future care is an ongoing need arising as it arises, and periodic payment matches the money to the need. Pain and suffering or lost earnings have no such schedule.

Either party may request, which is easy to overlook. Periodic payments are usually thought of as a defendant's protection against a large lump sum, but a claimant may want them too — a structured stream cannot be dissipated, and it lasts as long as the need.

Subsection (c): the court shall make a specific finding of the dollar amount of periodic payments that will compensate the claimant for the future damages.

Subsection (d) requires four specifics in the judgment: the recipient, the dollar amount, the interval between payments, and the number of payments or the period over which they must be made.

An obligation running for decades must be certain on the face of the judgment, since the parties will be administering it long after the case is closed.