About Short-Term Disability Help

If you are an employee of a company and hurt while not at work you can file for short-term disability, which is an insurance that your employer purchases to help cover you for time missed. Every company has their own rules as to how you can use the disability insurance as well as the time maximum time that you can collect wages.

How does Short-Term Disability Work?

If you have an accident or become ill away from your job site, you may be eligible to collect short-term disability benefits through your employer. There are certain rules that may be in force that your employer may require. For instance, if you have vacation time and sick pay, you may have to use this before the short-term disability begins. Moreover, there could be a waiting period that you have to wait until the insurance begins. 

Employees are normally paid up to 70 percent of their current wages, but can be 50 percent depending on the policy the employer purchases. Normally the time frame to receive these benefit is a maximum of 15 to 25 weeks. If the employee cannot return to work at this time, then their long-term disability would kick in, if they elected to have this through their employer.

Employers Create the Policy

An employer is the one that typically creates the short-term disability insurance policy plan and pays for it. However, some employers make the employee pay for the premiums that are deducted out of their paycheck. Moreover, to qualify, an employer may only offer the benefit to full-time employees or those that work a specific number of hours each week.