7 December 2017
 Categories: Law, Blog

For those injured on the job, you likely know about workers comp insurance, which is provided by your employer and helps you with your salary and medical bills. While workers comp is meant to be a temporary measure, not all injuries and illness cooperate with the time line. If you are saddled with a permanent injury and looking at a dismal financial future as a result, you will just naturally want to take advantage of as much assistance as you can. Read on to learn more about collecting both workers comp and Social Security disability at the same time.

Do you qualify for both?

There is no rule that should prevent a permanently injured worker from participating in both workers comp and Social Security, as long as the workers qualifies for each program individually. There are a few major differences in the two programs to be aware of:

1. Social Security requires you to undergo a 5 month wait for benefits, but being approved at all can take months and months. Workers comp is available to an injured worker from the very first moment of work and begins right away.
2. Workers comp is run by each state individually, but Social Security is a federal program.
3. Social Security provides a set amount of benefit each month, based on your previous salary and work history Workers comp provides short term benefits that evolve into a settlement, which is negotiable depending on several factors, former salary being just one of those.

Offsets and benefit reduction

While you can, technically, receive both of these valuable benefits concurrently, there is a set limit on exactly how much you can earn in a month. Since the Social Security program requires recipients to stay under a certain amount of income each month, your Social Security income could be reduced by what is known as an "offset," depending on how much you are getting from workers comp.

The importance of getting the most possible from your workers comp settlement cannot be overstated, since there is no limit to how much you can get. The calculation of this delicate balance of income is vital, and your workers comp attorney can help you to use certain illness-related deductions to get the most out of both programs. It should also be noted that your workers comp benefits can be structured to provide you with the maximum amount of benefits.

It's advisable to contact a workers compensation attorney once you know you are dealing with a permanent injury; the negotiations and benefits coordination are too important and complicated to leave to chance.