Until recently, my husband and I were in decent paying jobs. We were renovating and paying off our first home while saving to purchase the next family home. It’s ironic that sometimes, no matter how prepared you are, a simple accident can take away, in an instant, everything you have worked so hard for.

The Injury

Last year, my husband was injured while performing one of his usual work duties; cleaning the work van on the weekend so that he was ready for the working week ahead. As the injury occurred on a weekend, his employer advised him that he was unable to claim the incident through Workers Compensation. After investigations and various conversations, we discovered that as it was a requirement to have the vehicle clean and ready for work he was able to make a claim.

WorkCover

This process was long and painful though as we had to provide a massive amount of information to WorkCover supporting our claim. After a period of time, WorkCover ceased the weekly payments and my husband and I became concerned with the lack of money coming in when compared to the amount of bills we were having to pay. This added extra stress as my husband was still recovering from surgery.

Fortunately, a colleague of mine inquired into whether we had Income Protection. This wasn’t something we had considered as we had been focusing all our efforts on the WorkCover claim. I contacted my husband’s superannuation fund and started the application process.

Income Protection

Income Protection was one thing we knew was really important but we didn’t understand what type of cover we had. We were required to wait 90 days after the last day he had worked to be able to commence a claim. As you can imagine, 90 days without income can be extremely difficult.

Detailed forms had to be completed including an Employer’s Statement. This had to be completed by my husband’s employer and because the employment ceased on bad terms, we knew the required information would not be provided.

When we explained the whole situation to the claims assessor, she made sure the process was speeded along so that we didn’t have to wait too long; by this point, we really started to struggle financially.

By the time the claim had been approved, my husband had been diagnosed physically fit to return to light duties and due to this, we were only entitled to a once-off lump sum payment.

In hindsight, we should have researched the type of cover we had in more detail and made an appointment to see Tony Marshall before the accident so that we had more appropriate cover. Make sure you make an appointment to discuss your insurances with someone so that you have peace of mind as you never know what could happen tomorrow.