What is Short-term disability?

Disability lawyer David Brannon. In this video, I'm going to talk to you about what are short-term disability benefits. After watching this video, you'll have a better overview of what these benefits are, when you can qualify for them, and how much you can get. If you like this video, hit the like button. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us your comments if you have any specific questions. So what are short-term disability benefits? Quite simply, they are income loss payments paid to an employee who is unable to work because of an illness, accident, or medical condition. These are benefits that are paid on a usually bi-weekly but sometimes monthly basis, and they're actually like a loss of income payment. So you would get a check or a deposit in your bank account for money while you're off on a sick leave. So these kind of benefits are paid over the short term, meaning usually you're going to see them paid for anywhere from 15 weeks to up a year. The payments themselves are a percentage of your actual weekly wages or income. So they're going to be usually in the range of about 50% of your wages up to 100% and anywhere in between there. The money you get can be taxable, or they can take out your other payroll deductions depending on the type of short-term disability plan you have. The big thing to know about these short-term disability plans is that they're they are unique to your employer in workplace. Not every employer offers short-term disability benefits. So you have to look and see does your employer offer them, and if so what are the specifics of your plan? So you apply by filling out paperwork and sending it into the administrator of the plan. Now the plan administrator is usually not your employer. They will usually either hire a plan administrator or it will be done by an insurance company. You get the paperwork into the insurance company and that will include getting them an application form, and that is a specific form that they that the benefits provider will give you, and a medical report form that you will need to get from them, take to your doctor, and get it back into them. Once you get the medical report form in and also your application form, your employer will also send over some information as well. Once they have all that the claim it the disability plan administrator will do what is called adjudicating your claim. Adjudicating just means that they're going to review it and make a decision to approve it or deny it. Short-term disability is not automatically approved even if your doctor says that you need to be off work on a sick leave. The the people at the medical plan will make a decision and you may disagree with that decision. If you do disagree with it you have the opportunity to appeal their decision, and you do so by indicating to them that you want to appeal. You put that in writing and then you can go through the appeal process. So that's it in a nutshell. Short-term disability is not available to everyone. You've got benefits that can be paid out for a short period of time usually like 15 weeks to up to a year maximum. You're going to get a percentage of your income and it's going to be managed and adjudicated by an outside agency usually an insurance company. Now if you don't have coverage for short-term disability benefits through your workplace there is another alternative called EI sickness. I'm not going to get into that in this video but that is a form of short-term disability that is available to anyone who works and pays into the EI program. That's all for now. We'll see you back here next time. Take care.