Getting injured at work can be extremely stressful—how’re you going to continue earning your wages for the month? If your injury prevents you from being able to do your normal job while you recover, you might be able to get temporary disability benefits. These benefits are payments that you can receive in case you lose wages due to:

  • Your doctor deems you unfit to do your job for three or more days or get hospitalized overnight.
  • Your employer is not offering different work to help you earn your usual wages as you recover

According to top workers’ compensation attorneys, here’s all you need to know:

Different kinds of temporary disability benefits

You can get two different types of temporary disability benefits:

  • If you’re unable to do any sort of work as you recover, you can receive temporary total disability payments
  • If you’re able to do some level of work as you recover, you might receive temporary partial disability payments. Your wages as you recover need to be below the limit set by the law.

How much can you get?

As a rule of thumb, TD benefits are around 2/3rds of the pre-tax wages you lose while recovering from your injury. You can’t get more or less than a maximum and minimum weekly amount set by the law. TD benefits are free from all federal, state, and local income taxes. You also don’t have to pay any union dues, retirement fund contributions, or Social Security taxes on these funds.

It can be difficult to determine the exact amount of TD that you’re liable to receive by yourself, especially if:

  • You had a second job during your injury
  • You have seasonal jobs
  • You have wages that fell or rose
  • You earn income from other sources, such as car allowances, clothing, housing, bonuses, overtime, or tips
  • You were supposed to get a wage increase after your injury
  • You received your TD benefits 2 years after you got injured

When do the payments begin?

If you’re liable to receive workers’ compensation, you’ll get your first payment within 14 days of your employer learning about your illness or injury and your doctor informing your employer that you’re unable to do your job because of your injury. You should get your payment from the local claims administrator, who must send you an accompanying letter detailing the calculation of the payment.

You should get TD benefit payments every two weeks for the duration of your eligibility. If you and your claims administrator disagree with your doctor’s report about your injury, you might need to consult a qualified medical evaluator who has passed a test about the evaluation process for workers’ compensation.

A person’s arm with a band-aid

Looking for a workers’ comp insurance company near you?

Law Office of Harley Merritt has got you covered! We have professional workers’ compensation lawyers who can help you get fair workers’ compensation insurance benefits for your workplace-related injury or illness. You deserve to get financial support for your pain.

You can get in touch with us for a free consultation.