How would State disability benefits coordinate with company funded short term disability?
April 17th, 2009 | by admin |
PB2u asked:
In California, we have state funded short term disability benefits which give you roughly 60% of your regular income while temporarily out of work. My company (based in New York), has their own company funded short term disability which provides you 70% of your gross pay less taxes & cost of health ins., etc. Can you use both of these benefits together? Obviously, you cannot exceed 100% of your regular income but will the benefits coordinate to give you more than 70% of your regular income?
Jonathan
In California, we have state funded short term disability benefits which give you roughly 60% of your regular income while temporarily out of work. My company (based in New York), has their own company funded short term disability which provides you 70% of your gross pay less taxes & cost of health ins., etc. Can you use both of these benefits together? Obviously, you cannot exceed 100% of your regular income but will the benefits coordinate to give you more than 70% of your regular income?
Jonathan
No Responses to “How would State disability benefits coordinate with company funded short term disability?”
By Worldly25 on Apr 19, 2009 | Reply
No. First you use the company’s plan, when that ends you use the state plan. You cannot legally submit an application to the state till your company plan is exhausted.
By mbrcatz on Apr 20, 2009 | Reply
You actually can’t exceed 70% of your regular income - that’s how disability works. See, as a company benefit, it’s not taxable - so making more than 70% tax free, means you’d be bringing home more on disability, than if you were working. So the system is limited to a max of 70%.
If you CAN collect with two policies or benefits, the private policy has a clause in it, that they get reimbursed from the public (state or federal) disability up to the amount you get paid. So, if your company only paid 50%, you would collect that, and then the 10% from your state plan, up to the higher limit - 60%.
By DCA on Apr 20, 2009 | Reply
Actually, you should file a claim both with the State of California and your employer’s insurance carrier - both CA SDI and STD can run concurrently.
Your STD plan has an offset provision, which means that whatever you receive through CA SDI will be a direct offset to your STD benefit. For example, if your weekly STD benefit is $500.00 and you are receiving $300.00 weekly through CA SDI, then you would receive $200.00 weekly through STD after the offset.
When you file your claim with your employer’s insurance carrier, make sure to tell them the status of your CA SDI claim. If you are already receiving benefit payments through CA SDI, then make sure to tell them the amount you are receiving and send them a copy of your award letter and or payment stub from CA. Until they receive the award letter or payment stub, they will most likely offset the statutory max of $917.00 weekly from your STD benefit. Of course, if you end up receiving less than that and you provide proof to them, they will go back and issue payments to make up for the underpayment.