After you experience a major car accident and are trying to recover from your injuries, you may need to start thinking about settling your case. The best option for doing this is hiring a personal injury lawyer, and he or she will probably recommend waiting to settle until you reach maximum medical improvement (MMI).
What Is MMI?
In personal injury law, MMI is a term used to describe the time in which an injury victim has recovered as much as he or she ever will. Another way to say this is that it is the point where the person reaches the best state he or she will ever reach, in terms of recovering from car accident injuries.
There are times when people fully recover from the injuries they suffer from car accidents, but there are also times when people never reach the same state as what they were in prior to the accidents.
If your accident left you with major injuries, and if you think you will never fully recover, you should talk to a lawyer about MMI and how that will affect when you file your case and settle your case.
How Can You Know When You've Reached MMI?
One of the hardest parts of MMI is knowing when you have reached it, and it is not something you will probably be able to diagnose on your own. In most cases, people who are severely injured will have to visit multiple doctors in order to find this out. In addition, people with major injuries typically need to wait for months or years before they know when they have reached MMI.
This is especially true if a person injures his or her head, back, or neck. These types of injuries tend to have lifelong effects, and there are many times when these injuries leave people with permanent damages and health problems.
Why Does This Matter?
Waiting to settle your case until you reach the point of MMI is vital in a car accident case for several reasons, but there is one main reason for this. The number one reason you should not settle your case until you reach MMI is to make sure you request enough compensation from your settlement. It is impossible to know how much money to ask for if you do not fully know how the injuries will affect you for the rest of your life.
One thing you should realize is that you should wait to settle until you reach MMI, but this does not mean you should wait until you reach MMI to initiate your case. In fact, you only have a limited amount of time to initiate a personal injury case after a car accident occurs, and you will need to know what this length of time is.
This time frame is called the statutes of limitations, and the time frame varies from one to six years. Every state has laws relating to this, and you must follow the laws in the state you reside in. Because of this law, you must file your case before the time runs out; however, this does not mean you have to settle right away. You can wait to settle your case for years, if you wish, and you should try to wait until you reach MMI.
If you are recovering from injuries you incurred in a car accident and would like to find out your rights, check out sites like http://www.bjhmaldenlaw.com and contact a law firm that offers legal services for car accident cases. You can then meet with a car accident lawyer to talk about your case, your injuries, and MMI.
