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Health and Life

Disability Insurance in Minnesota

Replaces your paycheck if an illness or injury stops you working. The coverage most people forget.

Your ability to earn is your largest asset, and the one most families leave uncovered.

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Written by Pat Bernauer, licensed Minnesota insurance agent (NPN 32897) · Updated

The short answer

Disability insurance replaces part of your paycheck if an illness or injury keeps you from working — the coverage most families leave out. Social Security disability is not a substitute: it pays only for a condition expected to last at least a year or end in death, with nothing for a partial or short-term one. A private policy is priced on your age, health and occupation, and we show you what a benefit sized to your paycheck would cost.

Social Security disability:
pays only when a condition is expected to last at least a year or result in death — Social Security Administration

How we can help

Start by finding out whether what your employer already gives you is enough. Often it is not, and one call settles it.

  • Read your employer's plan and tell you what it actually pays, and for how long.
  • Quote an individual policy that follows you between jobs.
  • Explain what the tax treatment does to the amount that reaches your account.
  • Handle the application with you.

You’ll work with Pat or Spencer directly. Whoever quotes it is the person who answers when you call about it later.

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More about Disability Insurance

Disability insurance pays you a percentage of your income — usually somewhere around sixty percent — if you are unable to work because of an illness or injury. It is not for catastrophic, permanent injuries alone. The claims that actually happen are back problems, cancer treatment, a difficult pregnancy, a surgery with a long recovery. Ordinary things that keep an ordinary person off work for months.

  • Short-term disability
  • Long-term disability
  • Individual policies that follow you between jobs
  • Coverage for the self-employed and business owners
  • Own-occupation definitions where available
  • Supplemental coverage on top of an employer plan
  • Business overhead expense coverage

Short-term disability covers you for a few weeks up to about a year, and usually starts paying quickly. Long-term picks up after that and can run for years or until retirement age. The gap between when your sick leave runs out and when long-term coverage begins is where people get caught, so the waiting period is worth paying attention to.

Group disability through work is a good start and it is often free, but it typically covers a lower percentage of your income, caps out at a maximum monthly benefit, and — this is the part that surprises people — the benefit is taxable when your employer paid the premium. An individual policy you pay for yourself with after-tax money pays out tax-free. It also stays with you when you change jobs, which group coverage does not.

If you work for yourself there is no sick pay behind you at all. For contractors, tradespeople and small business owners this is often the single most important policy on the list, and it is the one almost nobody asks us about.

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