Document the lawful claim and settlement, your entitlement to the payment and its actual path. Do not assume a settlement label resolves every source question or that records concerning the payer can never be required. Counsel should assess what the actual transaction and filing instructions require, including any unexplained third-party routing.
Entitlement, receipt and what you still have to prove
Suppose the defendant pays through a law firm trust account and then a numbered company. Each hop is documented: instructions authorising it, the account statements on both sides, and the reason for the structure. Beyond capital, the investor must engage through day-to-day management or policy formulation; specified limited partner rights may satisfy this, while a purely passive stake does not.
At least ten qualifying full-time jobs must be created per investor, and the investor, spouse and children are not counted. A settlement paid in installments over time raises a separate timing question from a lump-sum payment, since only funds actually received and irrevocably committed can support an at-risk investment on any given date. Ask opposing counsel or the paying party for a written representation about the origin of the settlement funds when court filings alone do not disclose it, rather than treating the payment amount as self-explanatory.
Keep the settlement agreement, the release and every payment record together, because each document answers a different piece of the lawful-source question.