Can I do volunteer work while collecting long-term disability benefits?

Disability attorney Gregory Dell discusses if a claimant is able to participate in volunteer work while collecting disability benefits from their disability insurance company.

Many of our clients will ask us if they can engage in volunteer work while they’re collecting long-term disability, and the answer really depends on the scope of how disability is defined within your disability policy. For example, if you were going to go out and do some volunteer work for a local charitable organization, whatever those activities are that you’re asked to do for that charitable organization, if they’re similar to the scope of what you were doing before you became disabled, the long-term disability carrier could make the argument that if you’re able to do that type of work for the charitable organization, then why couldn’t you go do that kind of work for an employer that is paying you.

So you have to be very careful that even though you feel like one day you want to go out and do something for a charitable organization or do something that you used to do for years every November or every December, you want to be very cautious because a disability carrier, while you’re trying to do something that’s really nice, will often use that against you to say that if you can do that then you can go back to work.