Settlement

Settlement is the back half of the lifecycle: once a financed claim reaches maturity, the real-world payment returns and must be distributed. The SettlementManager runs a maturity-gated, conservation-checked waterfall that cannot strand funds.

The waterfall

At settlement, the returning amount is distributed in order:

1. Vault repayment — each funding leg's principal + agreed return is released back to its vault (onSettlementReturn, SETTLEMENT_ROLE).
2. Residual to the beneficiary — anything left over after vaults are made whole.

The claim's slice state in the ClaimRegistry is released as part of the same flow (releaseSlice), moving the claim toward PAID.

Conservation by construction

The waterfall is value-conserving: the sum released to vaults plus the residual equals the amount settled — the contract checks this rather than trusting the caller. Settlement is maturity-gated, so it can't run early, and the design ensures a pause can't strand an in-flight settlement (an adversarial test guards this).

Roles

Only the SettlementManager (holding SETTLEMENT_ROLE) can release claim slices and return capital to vaults; only the MaturaRouter (holding ROUTER_ROLE) can reserve and fund. This separation keeps the financing and settlement paths independently authorized.

See Contracts for the full role model and the Threat model for the assets and trust assumptions involved.