Understanding the Disability Insurance Game: When to Hire a Lawyer

Understanding the Disability Insurance Game: When to Hire a Lawyer

Disability rights are a convoluted mess, plain and simple. It feels natural when purchasing disability insurance to question some of the language in the contract. Far too often we find ourselves fighting for the rights we are entitled to due to minute loopholes and vague language written into contracts, and this is especially true for disability insurance payouts.

Disability insurance exists to protect you if you are sick or hurt and cannot work, but it can often prove to be highly confusing with many different forms and attached stipulations. For transparency’s sake, the main considerations you need to make are in the differentiation between long and short term policies. Everyone should consider disability insurance in order to protect themselves from the unpredictable nature of daily life. This is especially poignant considering that employers are slowly rolling back benefits for their workforce. Less than 50% of Canadians now are guaranteed disability benefits through their place of employment, and over eight in ten of those now lacking that safety net have not yet purchased it for themselves.

The most important asset you own is your health. Without it, you cannot support the lifestyle you are accustomed to. Even more importantly, if you find yourself unable to work for an extended period of time, it may become hard to support yourself at all without help. In the United States, about a quarter of 20-year-olds suffer from some circumstance that will put them out of work for 90 days or more before they reach retirement age. These are risky odds to leave to chance.

These reasons span a wide range from car accident complications or accidental self-inflicted injuries around the house to illnesses that require bed rest or hospitalization. No matter the reason, the effect is the same. Going months without pay is devastating, and if you are told that you’re not entitled to the benefits you have been paying for, that devastation is magnified tenfold.

This is where an experienced long term disability lawyer comes in. If you have been denied the disability coverage that you are entitled to, you need to stand up for your rights. This can literally be a decision that puts food on your table or lets you go hungry.

Many recipients of disability subsidies find that when they need the coverage they have been paying for, they are denied by their insurer. This can be due to any number of obscure reasons, but it primarily falls to the contract – insurance companies are often able to deny a claim for any reason they choose and cite vague contractual obligations on your part that they claim have not been met. Other times, insurers agree to pay but delay the disbursement of benefits for extended periods of time or only release some of what you are paying for and attempt to mislead you into thinking that you have received what you are entitled to. These are tricks – plain and simple – that insurance companies use to weasel their way out of paying you. They do this to try to maximize profits, payouts hurt the bottom line, but delays or shortfalls in aid can be crippling to your financial and physical health.

Make sure that you are protected when receiving your insurance payout. Consult with a specialist in disability law to ensure that you are receiving everything you are entitled to. Don’t be led astray and settle for less than you deserve simply because an insurance agent tells you that something is not covered.