General Information About Income and Wage Loss
You are entitled to recover lost wages and income due to accident-related injuries. This includes both income lost due to time spent unable to work, and time missed because you were undergoing treatment for your injuries. You have the same right to recover whether you work full-time, part-time, or are self-employed.
You may be entitled to wage loss reimbursement even if you receive sick pay, vacation pay or disability pay. This is because you would have been entitled to use that sick leave or vacation time for other periods when you might have needed or wanted it. Therefore, using sick leave or vacation pay is often considered the same as losing the pay itself.
In addition to time lost from work, you may be entitled to be reimbursed for work opportunities you lost due to your injuries. Proving a lost opportunity (such as a job interview or a promotion) is much more difficult than showing actual time lost from work. However, even if you cannot verify or quantify this in a dollar amount, that lost potential income or opportunity may still add to the value of your claim. How much the value is increased depends on how strong your proof is, and how much income that lost opportunity might have generated.
It is important to remember that you must have medical authorization to be off work. It is generally not sufficient that you decide you don't feel up to a job; get your treating doctor's statement that you are to spend that time recovering from your injuries.
DOCUMENTING THE CLAIM
The type of documentation required will depend upon how you were employed. The following information should give you some guidelines.
If You Are Regularly Employed by a Company
If you are regularly employed by someone else, verification is fairly simple. Have your employer write a letter on company stationery. The letter should include the following information:
The insurance company may want some additional verification, but this will be a good start. In addition, be sure to get your doctor's statement indicating the specific dates you were not able to work due to your injuries from the accident.
If You Are Self-Employed, or Not Regularly Employed
If you are self-employed or not regularly employed, proving lost income is more difficult, and the insurance company will definitely require more detailed documentation. You need to be able to prove net loss of earnings, which is gross income less expenses. In other words, if you are a contractor who is unable to work for three months following an auto accident, and you would have had gross income of $30,000 and expenses of $17,000 (cost of materials, labor, etc.), then your net loss of earnings is $13,000.
Carefully document how much time you were unable to work, what your gross earnings would have been had you been able to work, and what your expenses would have been. The insurance company will most likely require tax returns for the past 2 or 3 years.
If you had been working consistently before the accident, you can show an average for the period by putting together copies of billing statements, invoices, payments received or other evidence of income earned. You may need to include letters from individuals indicating your services would have been used had you been able to work. From this information you can calculate how much income you lost for the time you were unable to work due to injuries.
If your income fluctuates during the year, you may be able to document the value of lost work time by showing what you normally earn during an entire year, then dividing into weekly or monthly averages. However, if the work is seasonal, you will need to take that into account.
If your income was particularly low after the accident due to your injuries, you can demonstrate how much you normally earned by using several years of tax returns.
In any event, be sure to get your doctor's statement indicating the specific dates you were not able to work due to your injuries from the accident.
The above is not legal advice. That can only come from a qualified attorney who is familiar with all the facts and circumstances of a particular, specific case and the relevant law. See Terms of Use. |