Two years from the crash is the deadline that matters most in Delaware, and the insurance company does not want you to know that lien problems usually do not kill a good case. What ruins cases is letting a rushed settlement or missed filing deadline on the insurer's timetable wipe out your leverage.

For a Rehoboth Beach crash on Coastal Highway, a construction-zone wreck on Route 1, or an Uber/Lyft claim, the settlement pie usually gets divided in this order: case costs and attorney fee, then valid liens or reimbursement claims, then the client's share. The fight is often over how much those lienholders really get, not whether they get paid at all.

Medicare is serious because it has a federal reimbursement right for crash-related treatment it paid. If your lawyer has not resolved conditional payments, that is a problem to fix now, not proof the case is ruined.

Delaware Medicaid can also seek repayment through the Division of Medicaid & Medical Assistance. Private health insurance may assert subrogation or reimbursement rights, especially with self-funded ERISA plans. Those claims are negotiable in many cases, and they should be checked against what treatment was truly accident-related.

What to do now:

• Ask for a written breakdown showing gross offer, attorney fee, case costs, Medicare amount, Medicaid amount, health-plan claim, and your net.
• Ask whether a lawsuit was filed before Delaware's 2-year personal injury deadline.
• Ask whether Medicare's conditional payment letter or final demand has been requested.
• If answers are vague, you can switch lawyers mid-case in Delaware. Your old lawyer may claim a fee lien for work already done, but that does not mean you are trapped.

Do not sign a release just because the insurer says year-end authority is expiring. Once you sign, the claim is usually over even if the lien numbers were wrong.