Answers To Questions Most Often Asked By Someone Receiving Disability Benefits

What is long-term disability insurance?

This coverage provides the insurance holder with protection against a time when that particular employee might get saddled with a permanent injury, or might develop a severe and chronic health condition. Such a development would keep the injured or ill individual from returning to work. The insurance benefits provide the employee with a portion of his or her previous salary.

How does long-term disability insurance differ from short term disability insurance?

Short term disability payments serve as a temporary solution to a problem that should last for just a brief span of time. Such payments replace a worker’s wages when that same employee cannot be going to work. Long term disability benefits provide a permanent replacement for a worker’s lost salary.

What sort of disability allows an employee to qualify for long-term disability benefits?

Any such disability must be one that keeps the affected employee from doing his or her job. Once someone has been receiving long term disability benefits for two years, the benefit-provider (the insurance company) may seek evidence that the disabled worker cannot handle any job for which he or she has been trained or educated. Workers do not always get hit with such 2-year requirements. It happens in some states, but not all of them.

How rapidly can a claim be resolved?

A claim for long-term disability benefits can usually take one to two years. That is a shorter span of time than the lengthy interval that precedes settlement of an accident claim. The time that precedes settlement of a long-term disability claim gets shortened, because it never has to take into consideration the pain and suffering of the disabled worker. That same worker must seek to show that he or she cannot fill the duties attached to his or her previous job. Meanwhile, the insurance company tries to show that the same employee can carry out successfully the responsibilities attached to his or her previous job.

Can an insurance company legally use surveillance?

Yes, it can record and even photograph the actions of a disabled employee, one that is receiving disability benefits. It can use evidence of your actions to assess the veracity of your claim. There are two ways that surveillance aids assessment of a disabled worker’s ability to meet the company’s requirements. First, it aids assessment of the degree to which that worker has been injured. Second, it can be used to make a witnesses story appear made-up.

How can a client help a lawyer to go after long-term disability insurance?

The client can create a paper trail, one that offers evidence of a given illness or injury. The client does not delay completing the task of getting the long term disability package from his or her employer. It is best to talk with your Personal Injury Lawyer in Milton and know more about it.