ERISA long term disability denial appeals are not Do It Yourself projects. Time is NOT on your side with an ERISA long term disability denial appeal.
To understand why ERISA Missouri long term disability lawyers are necessary for long-term disability cases, you need to know why doing it yourself can have terrible consequences.
If you appeal your long term disability denial on your own, it is likely that you will make a mistake, or simply not do everything that is required or not enough to give you the best opportunity to win. The tragic thing in ERISA disability cases is, if this happens, you cannot repair this damage.
In federal district court cases in Missouri and federal district court in Arkansas, an ERISA long term disability case is NOT a typical court case. There are no witnesses. No evidence is presented. The judge alone decides the case based on briefs from both sides and a box of records submitted by the insurance company.
An attorney will write better briefs than someone who doesn’t write briefs and present facts to courts for a living. In an ERISA insurance denial case the court is looking at the following issue: Was the insurance company’s decision reasonable in light of information it had before it at the time of the decision?
The information used by the insurance company at the time of their decision (that box of records submitted to the judge) is very important. You cannot add to that box of records at or before trial. The only adding to that box of records comes during the appeal. This is why the appeal is the make-or-break moment of any claim. If you fail to get your documents into that box, and you simply cannot win at trial.
This is the danger of doing it alone: you might fail to do enough. An attorney familiar with disability and long-term disability is necessary because they know what that judge will find persuasive, what documents that judge will want to see.
Why Hire a Lawyer Immediately?
Now, it is vital to decide to move forward with legal representation as quickly as possible. There is a lot of information that will need to be obtained, and a lot of things to go through refine and distill for the denial appeal. This takes time, and the insurance company has done a good job of making sure your time time is very limited. This is why hiring a ERISA long term disability close to you is important. Do you think hiring a firm a 1000+ miles away is going to be able to meet with you as necessary to refine this information as questions come up? To maximize your chances of winning your appeal, you need as much time as possible working with your ERISA long term disability lawyer. You only have 180 days to appeal. With all the work that goes into an appeal, it is often impossible to write a decent appeal in less than 90 days. You must act immediately!