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Disability Payments

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tpete

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? Florida

I have disability insurance through my employer (a local municipality). The employer has stated that when an employee is out of work due to a disability, the employee has to use all of their accrued leave prior to receiving a disability payment. When the employee has exhausted all of their accrued leave, then, and only then will the disability insurance start to pay, and that the time out when using accrued leave counts against the length of coverage for disability payments. We are offered long term (52 weeks) or short term (26 weeks) coverage. For example, if your accrued leave covers you for 6 weeks, at the end of the 6 weeks when your disability payments start, you would only receive 46 weeks of disability payments instead of the 52 (if you had short term coverage, at the end of the 6 weeks, you would only receive 20 weeks of disability payments). Shouldn't employees be entitled to the full 52 (or 26) weeks of payments?
 


moburkes

Senior Member
My understanding is that this is absolutely normal. Many companies will not allow to you keep the accrued hours "banked" while you use the disability money.
 

tpete

Junior Member
My main question actually is regarding counting the weeks that you use your accred leave against the number of weeks that you are entitled to receive disability payments. For example, if I have long term disability (52 weeks) and I use 6 weeks of accruals, when my accruals are exhausted, shouldn't I be entitled to the full 52 weeks of disability payments instead of only 46 weeks (because they have subtracted the 6 weeks of accruals from the 52 weeks of disability)?
 

moburkes

Senior Member
You seem to think that you will automatically qualify for disability payments for that long. You may only qualify for for a shorter period.

Disability is meant to replace your income (at 665, usually). If you are disabled for 52 weeks, for example, and you've received income for 52 weeks (which includes the accrued time off money), then that has been met. It is not meant to be added to the end. So, if you have no accrual, you can use the entire 52 weeks. If you have 27 weeks accrued, you can use the difference.
 

cbg

I'm a Northern Girl
The short answer to your question is no, you shouldn't be able to add additional weeks on.

You are entitled to the number weeks permitted by the policy. Where the payment comes from is immaterial.
 

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