“Self-Reported” Symptoms: How to Fight Back With Medical Evidence
If you’re living with a disabling condition, you probably have a long list of symptoms that don’t show up on an x-ray or MRI. These might include fatigue, nausea, chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. While these conditions are very real, disability insurance companies are often skeptical of subjective or self-reported symptoms. In this blog, Bryant …
Learn How a Disability Journal Can Help Your Disability Claim
As you prepare a short or long-term disability claim, you’ll face countless questions about your symptoms, limitations, and daily activities. It can be difficult to articulate accurate, honest answers to questions about your ability to stand, lift, and walk. Thankfully, there are tools that can help. At Bryant Legal Group, we suggest keeping a disability journal …
What Is a Functional Capacity Evaluation?
Your inability to work is the key issue in a long-term disability claim. If you have physical limitations, a functional capacity evaluation (FCE) may help the insurance company gauge your ability to do your job or any type of employment. While these tests are not necessary in every disability claim, they can be a powerful, fact-based …
ERISA: When do “Lifetime” Healthcare Benefits Last a Lifetime?
District Court Rules that Pension’s Healthcare Benefits Last a Lifetime By: David A. Bryant The Northern District of Illinois recently addressed the question of whether healthcare insurance benefits under an ERISA pension plan lasted for a lifetime for two plaintiff retirees, despite the termination of the collecting bargaining agreement that established those benefits. In Its …
Do You Know the Deadline for Filing Your ERISA Claim?
Do You Know the Deadline for Filing Your ERISA Claim? Even if You Think You Do, You May Be Wrong While ERISA claims come with many obstacles, one of the most challenging is a disability insurance company’s right to shorten their plans’ appeal deadlines. Unfortunately, courts won’t give disabled workers and professionals who miss these …
Individual vs. Group Disability Income Insurance
Chicago Disability Lawyers Whether you have purchased individual or group (i.e., employer-sponsored) disability coverage can have a significant impact on your premiums, duties, and — eventually — ability to recover benefits. Many would-be insureds do not realize that there are material differences between individual and group disability insurance coverage, and simply choose a plan based …
Life Insurance: Understanding Pre-Existing Conditions
Chicago Life Insurance Attorney Life insurance claims can be significant, and as such, they are often denied. Beneficiaries may be taken by surprise, thinking that the act of securing benefits would have been straightforward. In truth, however, insurers will take advantage of any opportunity to justify the denial of a significant benefits payout, in the …
Video Surveillance Footage vs. Video Surveillance Summary Report
Court Questions if Insurer Actually Watched Video Surveillance Used to Deny LTD Claim, or Just Read the Report By: David A. Bryant In our September 2, 2018 blog article on the use of video surveillance in an insurer’s investigation of a disability claim, we saw how video surveillance of a long-term disability (LTD) recipient’s daily …
Disability Claimants Must Seek Timely and Adequate Care to Secure Full Benefits
Chicago Disability Lawyers: Helping You When You Need it Most If you’re suffering from a disability and are thinking about submitting a claim for benefits to your private disability insurer, or have already submitted a claim and had it denied, delayed, or otherwise mishandled, then you may be feeling somewhat overwhelmed. In the wake of …
How is Business Overhead Expense Insurance Different Than an Individual Disability Policy?
Chicago Insurance Attorney If your business is covered by private business overhead expense (BOE) insurance, you may be wondering how a claim brought under the BOE insurance plan differs from a disability benefits claim. Business overhead expense insurance is a unique and somewhat non-standard form of insurance that covers small and medium-sized businesses in the …