Can I do Volunteer Work While I Am on Disability Benefits

Author: Disability Attorneys Dell & Schaefer
Published: 2010/09/19 - Updated: 2016/03/20
Category Topic: Disability Insurance Claims - Academic Publications

Page Content: Synopsis - Introduction - Main

Synopsis: Answers the question can you engage in volunteer work while you are collecting long-term disability benefit payments.

Introduction

Many of our clients will ask us if they can engage in volunteer work while they're collecting long-term disability, and the answer really depends on the scope of how disability is defined within your disability policy.

Main Content

For example, if you were going to go out and do some volunteer work for a local charitable organization, whatever those activities are that you're asked to do for that charitable organization, if they're similar to the scope of what you were doing before you became disabled, the long-term disability carrier could make the argument that if you're able to do that type of work for the charitable organization, then why couldn't you go and do that kind of work for an employer that is paying you.

So you have to be very careful that even though you feel like one day you want to go out and do something for a charitable organization or do something that you used to do for years every November or every December, you want to be very cautious because a disability carrier, while you're trying to do something that's really nice, will often use that against you to say that if you can do that then you can go back to work.

Information supplied courtesy of the experts at diattorney.com who specialize in Long Term Disability.