ERISA Disability Versus Social Security Disability Benefits: What Is The Difference
ERISA versus Social Security disability. What’s the difference?
My name is Brandon Osterbind. I am an injury and disability attorney in Central Virginia and I help people whose long-term disability claims have been denied. And I have people ask me all the time, “What do you do again? What is ERISA disability?”
What is ERISA?
ERISA is an acronym that stands for the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. It’s a federal code that Congress enacted to protect employees with respect to their employment benefits provided by their employer.
It is a type of insurance policy that your employer purchases for all of the employees at your company. And it covers you for any condition. It doesn’t matter whether you are injured at work or not, or whether you have an injury or a medical condition.
If that condition takes you out of commission and your doctor says that you can’t work anymore, this policy will pick up, usually after 90 to 180 days, and provide long-term disability policy benefits. These are essentially a portion, sometimes 60%, sometimes 80%, of your gross wages that you were getting from your employer.
How is that different from Social Security disability?
People keep asking me, “How is that different from Social Security disability?” Well, Social Security disability is a completely different system. Social Security also provides long-term disability benefits but its benefits are provided by the federal government, not by your employer.
And a lot of times, the amount of your benefits is based on how many years you’ve worked, how many years of service you have in the working field, and how much you were making during that time. And this disability benefit is governed by the Social Security Administration.
You would file your claim. Everyone who files a Social Security claim files it with the same body of government, the Social Security Administration. And your claim goes through the same process with the same rules and the same people that are involved.
ERISA claims are different
But ERISA disability claims are very different. Every insurance policy is different. Every benefit is different. There aren’t any standardized rules across the board that will provide certain things in certain situations.
Every insurance policy has certain inclusions, and some have inclusions that others may not have. It’s important to know the difference between an ERISA disability policy, and an ERISA disability claim for long-term disability benefits, and Social Security disability.
I hope this video has been helpful and that you are now able to understand the difference between ERISA disability and Social Security disability.
If you have questions…
And if you have questions about whether you have an ERISA disability claim versus a Social Security disability claim, give us a call, or send us an email. We’ll be happy to sit down with you and discuss your situation. And we’ll make sure that if you have a long-term disability insurance policy, you have everything you need to make that claim.
