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Life disability insurance; which can sometimes be referred to as health and accident coverage is a policy that is designed with the specific purpose of paying out a percentage of the insured’s wages should he or she be unable to work.

There are two main reasons why the life disability claim is filed:

1. Accident; regardless of if it’s on the job or not
2. Debilitating illnesses

Workers that are covered under a disability insurance policy must prove that they are unable to execute the majority of their present duties in order to meet the criteria for a total disability status.

Shop Around Before Purchasing

Before you purchase it’s always best to shop around for multiple quotes before purchasing your life disability policy. Just going with the one that is the cheapest and calling it a day is not a good idea. Often the least expensive policy is likely to be the most restrictive when it comes to your eligibility and the monthly payout amount.

The individual insurance companies are able to set their own terms so you’re going to want to look out for some specific items; such as:

• Significant income percentage payout, 45-60% is going to be most typical
• 90 days or less for a benefit eligibility waiting period
• Less restrictions on an alternative employment option

There is a large amount of those that are receiving life disability insurance benefits want to be productive members of society and feel useful. They want to do this by pursuing some occupation where they will not be limited by their disability; however, there are some disability insurance policies that will discourage doing this strongly and it could even affect your benefit eligibility if you do.

Own Occupation and Other Disability Coverage

There are some in the field that consider the best disability policy to be a form that is called own occupation coverage. With this type of plan the disabled worker can still continue to earn income through other jobs while still colleting benefits under the policy. This is obviously going to benefit the insured should something happen and the insurance companies will promote all the other plans before this one.

The other alternative disability insurance is going to pay a percentage of the insured’s lost income with the stipulation that the insured will only consider future employment in his or her current field.

The absolutely worst coverage that you could get would be the form that requires the disabled worker to seek out any possible employment that he or she might be able to do. For instance, you could go from a high paying insurance agent position and something happens that it doesn’t allow you to function in that job anymore due to some sort of disability; however, you can run the register at McDonalds. In this example you’d be forced into the job at McDonalds even though your income is going to be radically lower then when you were able to perform at your own occupation.

The Return to Work

The other part of a disability insurance policy will involve that eventual return to work if you’re not permanently disabled. This is more of a temporary disability due to an illness or an accident. For example, a business owner might be able to go back to most of the duties he or she did before but still suffer a loss of both income and time.

With that example it brings into play something called residual disability. With the residual disability policy it will continue to pay a percentage of the income until the insured is working at the same level that he or she was working at before their sickness or accident.

You’re going to find that most all of the cheaper policies aren’t going to offer the residual disability coverage or if they do will most likely just pay out for lost time not lost income.

Financial Sense

With the disability insurance coverage it will almost always make more financial sense to have it then not to have it.

Even if you have a group insurance policy that provides for your emergency treatments or short term healthcare; however, few of these plans are going to protect an employee, or someone that doesn’t have a group plan at all, from the long term effects of having a disability or a debilitating illness.

Through having enough income to pay your mortgage and meet your other financial requirements while making your recovery from whatever is wrong will bring a lot of peace of mind and actually allow you to focus on the recovery not how you’re going to be able to pay your bills.

Final Thought

Trying to find an insurance policy after something happens is next to impossible verging more on the impossible side of the fence. Before you ask yourself whether or not you can afford it, you should ask yourself if you can’t afford not to.