Attention Highly Successful High Wage Earners
You built it but now an illness or injury is preventing you from working to your full capacity. Your life, and your financial life, in particular, is complicated. Most disability insurance policies were written with the hourly worker in mind and that's probably not you.
You should talk to a law firm that understands your complex life and which has substantial experience advising, working with, and representing highly successful people like you who are insured under either a group or private long-term disability policy.
An attorney who understands you and your life can advise you about the nitty-gritty of your policy (which was likely written for an hourly worker), the application process, help you determine where your claim needs support, and in some cases, work with your doctors and employers to ensure your claim is as likely to get paid as possible.
Three Things Highly Successful People Should Ask a Long Term Disability Attorney
- How many ERISA disability lawsuits have you ever filed? Yes, sure, most claims resolve without a lawsuit, but a lawyer who handles only one to five ERISA disability lawsuits a year is a low experience lawyer. You do not want a lawyer who dabbles in ERISA. You can go on Pacer to verify. BenGlassLaw files more than 80% of all new ERISA disability lawsuits here in the Federal Courts in Virginia.
- What do you charge for a pre-application Consultation? When you find an experienced ERISA disability attorney, pay for that expertise. You didn't get to where you are in life by going for the lowest cost alternative, did you?
- What does a pre-application Consultation include? (For most claims, you want the lawyer to review your policy and your recent medical records, and then strategize with you about the best path forward.)
Three Things A High Wage Earner Should Ask a Long Term Disability Attorney AFTER Receiving a Claim Denial
-
What Happened? (An experienced attorney’s office should be able to answer this for you in some detail based only on your denial letter. We do that for free.)
- What’s Next? (You are always entitled to at least one appeal of your claim after a denial.)
- Will You Handle My Case All the Way Through to a Lawsuit If Necessary? The only acceptable answer to this is Yes. Here’s why: the same insurance company that just incorrectly decided your claim may also incorrectly decide your appeal. It happens, no matter how strong your appeal is, especially if you are a high-wage earner. An experienced disability attorney understands this and is preparing your appeal with an eye on your litigation case.
Why does this matter? Because the law says that in general, no new information can be added to your claim after your appeal is denied. If there is evidence you want the judge to consider, you must add it to your appeal. If there are things the insurance company missed in evaluating your claim, you have to present your evidence in the appeal. There’s no such thing as saving your best arguments for the judge in these cases. Your appeal is your one and only chance to add everything a judge might later need to decide your case. DON’T WASTE IT!
How We Will Help
- If you have a letter from an insurance company, we’ll review it for free and let you know what we think (email our disability team now). There’s no obligation and we do it for free. If you decide that’s all you need, just let us know and we’ll be here if you need us again in the future.
- If you have a question or want to discuss your claim, we offer a flat-fee initial consultation (currently $600). At a minimum, we will need to review a copy of your disability policy before getting on a call or video chat to discuss your case. If appropriate, we will also review any recent medical records you send us. If you hire us at any point to do additional work on your claim, we will credit the appeal fee to the fee for future work. Often, this is all our clients need to resolve their cases.
The Best $600 Ever Spent
Our best consultation outcome to date was for a client who was receiving benefits but had a question about his policy. When reviewing it, we noticed he was not being paid under a provision we thought was designed for claimants in his situation. As part of his $600 consultation fee, we wrote a letter to the insurance company asking about it. A few weeks later, the insurance company agreed that he had been underpaid and sent him a check for nearly $500,000 for past-due benefits. Best $600 he ever spent (and best “thank you” lunch our team was ever treated to…)!
If you're a doctor, view our White Coat Investor Website article on Long Term Disability Claims.
