A common misconception among disability claimants is that you must apply for and receive short-term disability benefits to be eligible for long-term disability benefits. That seems logical but rarely is it true in practice. Most short-term and long-term disability plans are administered according to separate plan documents, and those plan […]
You worked hard on your long term disability appeal. Hopefully, you followed our LTD claim appeal best practices when preparing your appeal. Maybe you followed our advice and hired an attorney to prepare the appeal for you. Now, the appeal is in the insurer’s hands. Despite your preparation, it is still possible for the appeal to go awry after it is submitted to the disability insurer. […]
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, is a complex federal statute that applies to nearly all employee benefit plans, subject to a few narrow exceptions. Combining aspects of contract law, trust law, administrative law, and common law, ERISA is famously complex, earning it the moniker: “Everything Ridiculous Imagined Since Adam […]
Despite the admonition in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that there is only one form of civil action and that the rules apply to all civil actions,[1] Employee Retirement Income Security Act litigation is mostly conducted in a unique manner that dramatically departs from ordinary federal civil procedure. […]
Few doctors relish the task of completing disability paperwork. After a long day of treating patients, what physician wants to sit down and respond to a confusing questionnaire or a cryptic report? Worse yet is when the doctor’s words are misrepresented or taken out of context by the insurance company […]