If your long-term disability insurance claim has been approved, you are receiving monthly benefits provided under the terms of your policy. Monthly disability benefits usually are provided either to age 65 or lifetime. Some claimants prefer to accelerate those payments and receive a lump sum buyout rather than monthly checks. This procedure requires calculating [...]
At Ray Bourhis Associates, we often receive calls from claimants scared that they are being watched and followed by their insurance companies. In truth, this is a very common practice in the insurance industry and it is, for the most part, completely legal. Insurance fraud costs insurance companies more than $80 million each year. Whether [...]
The broad question is what are the things you have to watch out for when you’re filing a claim and what should you do? Do insurance companies conduct surveillance? Yes. Do they run around with cameras trying to see if you can carry groceries from the grocery store to the car? If you can carry groceries you can [...]
Underpayment of claims is, sadly, a very common practice. One of the typical methods of underpayment is the purchase of policy benefits by the insurance company. The company will run calculations in order to be able to do offer that as a fairly speedy resolution to the disability claim. For example, let’s say you have [...]
A long list of reasons to say no……. There is, sadly, a long list of all of the reasons why insurance companies deny or underpay a claim. They don’t always simply say okay, we’re going to send you to an independent medical examination and our doctor is gonna conclude that he disagrees with your treating [...]
Disabilities and the people who suffer them come in all shapes and sizes. Typical occupations of people we represent would include surgeons, anesthesiologists, all of the medical sub specialties, micro surgeons, lawyers, chiropractors, CEOs of companies, financial planners, CPAs, really anyone who has a specific professional occupation that they are working in who develops [...]
For surgeons and other physicians, partial long-term disability benefits may seem like a good solution but the way the benefits are determined is flawed. Partial benefits are based on a formula and very soon after the claim is filed the formula starts to disintegrate and someone may wind up in a situation where, over time, [...]
Who should I talk to if I think I have a problem? Well, often a policy holder when he/she notices that things are changing and that he/she may have to make an insurance claim contacts the insurance agent that sold them the policy in the first place. While that can be good, it can [...]
Own Occupancy Insurance is a policy that is sold that covers someone if he or she is unable to perform his/her normal duties in his/her own occupation. The technical definition of disability with an Own Occupation policy is you’re unable to perform your substantial and material duties in a usual and customary manner with reasonable [...]
By Long-Term Disability Lawyer Ray Bourhis Many long term disability insurance policies contain provisions regarding both Total and Residual (Partial) Disability benefits. Typically, the policies define Total Disability as the inability to perform the substantial and material duties of your regular occupation; Residual Disability is defined as the inability to perform "some" of the [...]
