Most people in California do not ever expect to become disabled. Nonetheless, there is no way to ever completely eliminate this from potentially happening. For this reason, many people do look into buying insurance policies that can provide them with some income should they unexpectedly be unable to work for extended periods of time. These are called long-term disability insurance policies and they do differ from short-term disability policies.
As explained by Magnify Money, when a person is evaluating long-term disability insurance, they should evaluate a few key provisions to make sure they select the right one for their needs. Different policies may define “disability” in different ways. For one policy, a person may be deemed to be disabled if they cannot work in any job or in any capacity. However, another policy may identify a person as disabled only if they cannot work in the exact profession that they previously worked in.
Policygenius indicates that many long-term disability policies may have exclusions that should be carefully reviewed. If a person’s disability is related to one of these exclusions, they may be denied the benefits they believed they had been paying for all along.
As the name implies, a long-term disability policy is meant to provide assistance for a situation that is expected to last for an extended time, not just for a few weeks or so. Part of this means that they will likely require people to wait a certain amount of time before their benefits are able to take effect. This is called the elimination or waiting period.