Disability Insurance Benefit Tips

It is rare that any disability insurance claimant has ever heard of ERISA until it comes time to file a disability claim. ERISA is a federal law that was intended to offer affordable employee benefits and protect employees. ERISA accomplished the goal of affordable employee benefits, but unfortunately the ERISA regulations have been construed by the courts in such a way that ERISA favors insurance companies. I...

Accident v. Sickness provisions in a disability policy usually becomes an issue when a person is expecting to receive a lifetime disability benefit. This issue only appears in private disability insurance policies. In some policies, if a person becomes disabled due to an accident before age 60, then the claimant may be entitled to a lifetime benefit.Disabili...

In this video, our disability attorneys touch on common residual disability issues and requesta that a disability carrier will have if you are seeking residual disability benefits.Residual disability can be a complicated analysis and it is often misused by disability companies as a substitute for a total disability claim. A carrier may tell a claimant they a...

ERISA regulations provide a claimant with 180 days to submit an appeal following a disability denial.In this video, attorneys Alex Palamara and Gregory Dell discuss the initial steps that our lawyers take when representing a claimant following a disability benefit denial.While an Appeal could be completed in a matter of days, we discuss what a claimant s...

Disability insurance companies are notorious for requesting Independent Medical Exams (IME or CME) in an effort to try to deny disability benefits. Our disability insurance lawyers have helped thousands of claimants to prepare for these obviously unfair and often biased examinations. Unfortunately disability claimants are required to attend an IME exam and cooperate while being examined. Let's take a look at a...

Should your case go to trial under an ERISA governed disability plan and you win the insured is only entitled to an award of disability benefits that have not been paid by the insurance company. This is further contingent on whether the insurance company denied your claim under the "own occupation" or "any occupation" definition of disability. Many courts throughout the country have held that if the claim was ...

Disability Insurance Attorneys Gregory Dell and Cesar Gavidia discuss the misconception that a claimant will be approved for long term disability insurance benefits if social security disability benefits are approved.In most cases this is a true statement, but we have been seeing a lot of people approved for SSDI benefits and then denied Long Term Disability...

As a disability lawyer that has handled thousands of disability insurance claims I often wonder about the qualifications and experience of the disability company employee that is making the decision to approve or deny my client's claim. During our routine activities of watching The Lincoln Financial Group, I came across an internet job posting for an "Associate LTD Benefit Specialist" at Lincoln Financial in A...

Disability insurance companies don't make their money by paying claims, but by denying them; as a result, there are nearly as many reasons for disability claim denial as there are disabling conditions themselves. At Dell Disability Lawyers, we've seen enough of these claim denials to get a clear sense of the methods insurance companies tend to use - and at the end of the day, some clear patterns have emerged. ...

This case shows how a long-term disability insurance company can claim an overpayment once a claimant is approved for social security disability income benefits.The following is a real life example of a claimant with a Unum disability policy who decided he did not want to pay back his SSDI overpayment.Daniel N., while employed by ICI Americas Inc., participated in his company's long-term disability ("L...

A long term disability attorney is not qualified to give any tax advice. Some disability claimants are taxed on the disability benefits that they receive each month. What happens when a disability claimant is approved for SSDI and then the disability carrier demands a repayment for the gross pre-tax disability benefits that have already been taxed? In this scenario the claimant is now being faced with having a...

It is important to take into consideration that every disability income policy may have different features.The following checklist will help you compare your current policies or one you may be considering:How is disability defined? Inability to perform your own job? Inability to perform any job?Does the policy cover accidents? Illness? Injuries?Are benefits available for total disability? For parti...

Dell Disability Lawyers represent clients that have either individual or group (ERISA) disability policies.Most group disability policies (also known as ERISA policies) are governed by a very complex federal statute called the Employees Retirement Income Securities Act ("ERISA"). An individual usually has a disability policy governed by ERISA, if they received the disability policy as an employee benef...

In this video, nationwide disability insurance attorneys Gregory Dell and Stephen Jessup have a candid question and answer discussion about the challenges in drafting a successful ERISA appeal. Numerous additional questions regarding the handling of an ERISA disability appeal are also discussed. This video is a general discussion for informational purposes and i...

Disability insurance companies will are investigating disability insurance claimants on all social media sites, including; Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.In this video Nationwide Disability Insurance Attorney Gregory Dell discusses the precautions that all disability insurance claimants using Facebook should consider.Our disability attorneys routinely ...

Unfortunately a recent Appellate court answered this question yes. Every disability case is distinguishable so for every case that says an FCE is reliable evidence of disability, there is another case that will say it is not reliable. Additionally, it is rare that an FCE on its own is enough to support a disability denial. Functional Capacity Examinations (FCE) requested by disability insurance companies are f...

The question listed below was recently posted on our disability blog, but since it is a question that we receive on a weekly basis, we decided to make it a frequently asked question.Thank you so much for this blog and your site. It is truly a resource for anyone with an ERISA claim.From the start things are skewed when you have a "mental health" diagnosis. The inequities the mental health community has had...

As disability lawyers we do not provide any tax advice. We are routinely asked about the tax implications of disability insurance benefits. In an effort to provide some answers in this area we reached out to Gary Kaplan, a certified public accountant.IssueWhat actions can a claimant take in order to exclude Disability Insurance Benefits from personal income tax?Hypothetical Fact PatternA surgeo...

Our disability lawyers are contacted on a weekly basis with this exact question. The short answer is that most disability insurance policies contain language that allows a disability company to setoff your monthly disability insurance check by the amount both you and your children receive from Social Security as a result of your disability. Most disability insurance companies have drafted policy language in a ...

In this video former Montana Insurance Commissioner John Morrison discusses that the fact that disability insurance companies will use hired gun doctors to wrongfully deny disability insurance claims. Additionally, you will hear a view in defense of hired insurance company doctors from a representative of a pro-insurance lobby organization.As disability insu...