Is Long-Term Disability Hard To Get?

When you run out of short-term disability as you recover from your car crash injuries, long-term disability may be an option.

Questions About Long-Term Disability? 

If you have a personal injury, you are more likely to get a better settlement when you have an attorney fighting for you. Schedule a case assessment with a member of our Personal Injury Team when you call 303-688-0944 or click here.

Understanding Long-Term Disability Insurance

In this video, I’m going to talk about LTD, long-term disability insurance. Short-term disability and long-term disability are insurance benefits that either you or your employer or both you and your employer have contributed to. It’s either a self-funded policy through your employer if your employer is large enough, or it’s just an insurance policy.

The insurance companies that I see most often are Cigna, Hartford, Prudential, Lincoln, Sun Life, Anthem, and MetLife. Those types of insurance companies are what we see when we’re looking at long-term disability insurance policies.

I have mentioned before that short-term disability usually lasts for six months. Sometimes, it’s a little bit longer, depending on the policy. And after short-term disability is exhausted, then you go to long-term disability. And you would think that the transition is seamless. But unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

Moving from Short-Term to Long-Term Disability

Just because you were approved for short-term disability through the last day of eligibility of short-term disability does not mean that you’re going to get Day 1 of long-term disability. If it’s with the same insurance company, it’s usually handled by a different department.

A different representative will be looking at your long-term disability insurance claim to determine whether or not he or she thinks you still continue to meet the definition of disability under your policy.

Some new long-term disability adjusters will do a new coverage review and a new medical review.

They may also ask for additional medical information from you even though you just provided additional medical information to the short-term disability rep.

Utilizing Multiple Policies

I’m going to go over some policy provisions here in a minute. But you can also have multiple private long-term disability policies.

So, if you’re a professional, you can or maybe should have your own individual long-term disability policies that you’re paying a premium for whether or not you have one through your employer.

However, calculating benefits in between the different policies can be tricky. All LTD policies or all long-term disability insurance policies will require you to apply for social security disability. That is because they get it as an offset.

LTD & Social Security Disability

The benefits that you have earned through your work will go to your insurance company. You don’t get both. For example, if you get $2,000 a month from Social Security, your long-term disability insurance company now has to pay you $2,000 less.

The Appeal Process

And in a long-term disability claim, as is also the case for a short-term disability claim, you have 180 days to appeal if you are denied.

Almost always, that’s the deadline. And it’s very intense to do the appeal and do it the right way. That’s because if they deny your case again after the appeal, your only option is litigation.

And it’s a completely different kind of litigation than any other litigation out there in that you can’t provide any new information.

That means your appeal, after a denial or a termination, is your only chance to submit evidence that you later want to rely upon if you go further into litigation.

Connecting with An Attorney

If you have a question about the above content or need help with your personal injury, please call us at 303-688-0944 to schedule a 30-minute consultation with a member of our Personal Injury Team.