Question
Is my wife allowed to resign from her position without the resignation affecting her long-term disability benefits?
My wife is currently on long term disability from her 4 years of working at Walmart. Even though her leave of absence ended last August Walmart is not terminating her employment. Our question is that because she would now like to resign on her own from Walmart so she would have access to her 401K funds but we are concerned if this would jeopardize her LTD benefits in any way, since we no longer have confidence that by calling her LTD case manager over the phone and asking him that we would get a straight answer, we are wondering what the cost would be to hire you to handle this process for us to get a written confirmation from them? Please let us know, thank you.
Answer
Mike, your wife’s resignation should not affect her LTD benefits so long as she remains disabled. However, if she resigns and starts drawing on her 401k retirement, that may constitute “Other Income” that the carrier can then offset from her monthly benefit (i.e., reduce her benefit by the amount received from the 401k monthly). You should request the Policy/Certificate from your employer or the carrier and review the “Other Income” section.
