Every week 4 people who work together pool their money and buy a lottery ticket.
One day a miracle happens and their ticket wins a substantial amount of money.
Two of the people are adamant that the ticket be claimed and collected as a 30 year annuity. The other two insist the prize be taken in the lump sum payment.
Legally how is such a dilemma solved?
A coin flip if three or more agree. If not, then court where the judge’s ruling may well be a mandated coin flip.
ETA: Lottery officials probably have a default choice if the winner(s) don’t or can’t register a preference.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the lottery office can give each of them their own choice.
My WAG is that the lottery would simply give each what they wanted. Two get paid the annuity way and two get paid the lump-sum way. Surely the finances can work out.
Specific to California.
Winner’s Handbook(PDF)
Will the Lottery Pay Individual Prizes to Group Winners?
California Lottery regulations allow for individual payments to be made to all members of a player group that wins a Scratchers, Fantasy 5, Daily 3, Daily 4, Daily Derby®, Hot Spot®, SuperLotto Plus, Mega Millions or Powerball prize of $1 million or more, as long as the group consists of 100 or fewer winners. If you are a Lottery group member, you may claim your winnings on a Lottery Multiple Ownership Claim Form available at any California Lottery District Office. All district offices are listed at the end of this handbook. The decision to claim your winnings as a group must be made at the time you claim your prize. Group winners must all choose the same payment option.
@running_coach is probably onto something. Rules will no doubt vary by state, so the first question will be does the state lotto have a rule about multiple winners. Texas, for instance, will not contemplate multiple claimants on the same ticket:
So in that case, it would seem the lotto would leave it to the claimants to “figure it out” and then come to claim the prize when they have all their shit in one sock.
These things should be agreed on before any lottery pool starts. I saw some people turn friendships into lifelong grudges over lottery pools. It will seem silly before you win, but get it on paper.
Because there are both state-run lotteries and multistate lotteries, the OP’s answers will turn on which lottery is involved in which state.
The OP is is Wisconsin which participates in MUSL, the umbrella organization for Powerball and Mega Millions. The WI lottery site didn’t have any useful info I could find. But it did say WI runs a bunch of drawings of their own independent from MUSL. So the rules might well be different depending on which game the OP’s friends participate in.
Actually, that site has a Multiple Winner Checklist document (PDF) which says:
That’s a great find. Which answers the question as to the WI lottery, but not necessarily as to the payouts from the MUSL lotteries. I like their idea of punting the problem to the courts. Very clever bureaucrats those Madisonian cheeseheads.
Where on the WI site did you find the link to that PDF? I’d like to see it in context and poke around some more nearby.
I think it was Quebec where an office group won a big multi-million dollar prize. Since some people had not paid into the pool just before the big win, there was some serious squabbling which ended up in court. Apparently, free draws and smaller prizes of $10, $100, etc. were not uncommon and for something that small, the winnings were simply plowed back into the group pool. So some people who had dropped out of the pool claimed they still had a stake in the prize due to the winnings from when they helped win earlier prizes. (which may have won and bought more tickets, etc.)
Another situation was where the people who had crossed a picket line were shunned after the strike, so not asked to participate in the group lotto pool - which caused a bit of a very hard feelings situation after a big win. But… no grounds for complaint.
The moral of these stories is - have a written agreement who is in the pool and what the policy on winnings will be… It’s not quite as bad as a good inheritance fight, but close.
I think the multi-state lotteries like Powerball payout through the state lottery office of the winner’s state and follow its rules as to things like group winners.
Sounds reasonable. As I understand, you have to cash multistate lottery’s tickets (such as Powerball) in the state they were bought, so it would be logical the same state’s rules apply.
Actually, I think it does answer the question about MUSL payouts, because I think that @Dewey_Finn is correct: the MUSL payouts are governed, in each state, by the general rules governing lotteries in that state. I know that’s true for California.
You can find the link to the PDF on this page. At the top, under the How to Claim a Prize header, there is a Claim Form link and a Multiple Winner Checklist link. There’s not much other information, though.