Reliance Standard is unreasonably prolonging the transition from STD to LTD for my boyfriend.

In August 2016 my boyfriend was placed on disability by his family physician. A short background, he is a type I Diabetic since age 4 and had to have multiple lumbar back surgeries between 2011-2012 for some disc issues. Due to the back pain and difficulties, his doctor decided to finally place him on disability from his employer, “The Basement Doctor” in Columbus, Ohio. He had STD which began through Reliance and he was receiving payments by September/October 2016 every week. There was 1 missed payment that we were aware of during the entire STD time period. In November he received his last STD payment and it was supposed to be switched over to the LTD side so his disability would continue. Never having had to deal with any disability in the past, my boyfriend just assumed it would be seamless from STD to LTD with maybe the usual medical review for update, but were we extremely wrong! It is now going on almost 5 months later and we still have yet to know if his claim is going to be accepted or denied and he has had no income for these past 5 months now. This week we were supposed to find out formally whether or not they were going to approve his claim, (after several months of medical record requests, faxing, emailing back and forth, and waiting) and as of right now his claims examiner that he was in constant contact with is now not returning messages. The general customer service gentleman that answered our phone call yesterday stated that the examiner had not updated any notes on the account since March, so he was unsure of what to tell us as to the status of the claim. This is ridiculous! He cannot work currently, and before long we are going to be really feeling the effects of him having no income coming in to cover all his medical expenses for the last 5 months. How is this even legal for this company to continue to still operate with all these complaints against them and issues?? We were holding onto faith that everything was going to work out, that all they needed was all these massive amounts of medical records they requested months ago and we would see a favorable end to all the madness….that was until yesterday when we researched a little more about them and saw all these issues and complaints from others. We need to obtain legal help NOW to get this settled ASAP, so if anyone has any direction to offer us, we would gladly accept any advice!