If your disability insurance is through UNUM, beware of their latest tactic: they want to define your "regular occupation" as what you were doing after the doctors said you were disabled. The doctor signed the form saying that I was disabled in March, and they want to say my disability began that August, therefore, the job that I was doing immediately "before disability began" was what I did between March and August, not my long career prior to becoming disabled.
My "usual and customary employment" apparently is not what I did full-time for nearly 20 years, the job that was written on the application form. They want to define it as the part-time job that I'm doing now because I can't do that job any more.
And, since I am now working more hours per week than I was several years ago, if they are allowed to define it in the way that they want to define it, they won't have to pay benefits, because I'm not disabled from working the number of hours I was working on their preferred "date of disability".
Atty. Steve Bloch in Pennsylvania is running a class-action lawsuit against UNUM. Atty. Ray Bourhis in California has already sued UNUM and won (and written a book about it). Atty. Harris Steinberg in California has recently sued a different disability insurance company and won $14M. Atty. Jesse Kaplan in California has experience with fighting similar battles. I have contact information for all of them. Or you can call your local County Bar Association and ask for a referral to someone who does "long term disability insurance" law.
Several of these lawyers have told me that if they refuse to accept medical information simply because it's not written on their form, that's "bad faith" -- two magic words that no insurance company wants to be accused of. In 2000, I had a letter from one doctor making the diagnosis and a letter from another saying that I was unemployable due to my symptoms, and to this day, they've refused to accept that information because it's not on their forms. The law says that it doesn't have to be on their forms, it's enough that it was provided in writing on the doctor's letterhead.
You can also report such underhanded tactics to your State Department of Insurance. Several years ago, most states banded together to force UNUM into a settlement for illegal conduct, so there is probably someone in your state keeping a very close eye on what they are doing who will be very interested to know that they're still misbehaving.
UPDATE 4/16/08
One of the lawyers I've contacted is sending me a retainer agreement because this attempt to change the terms of the policy is so blatantly illegal. Once that arrives, I can't talk openly about my own case, but should still be able to pass along general information about UNUM's illegal acts.
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