Total and Permanent Disability Claims – Beware! Beware of non-legally trained organisations offering help with your Income Protection or TPD claim.

Total and Permanent Disability Claims – Beware! Beware of non-legally trained organisations offering help with your Income Protection or TPD claim.

Total and Permanent Disablement claims or Critical Illness/Trauma

Recently, our firm has become aware of organisations offering assistance to people suffering an injury or illness and seeking to claim on a policy of insurance they hold for Income Protection, Total and Permanent Disablement claims or Critical Illness/Trauma.

These organisations will often describe themselves using terms like “advocate” or an “expert”, and will offer their assistance in return for a percentage cut of the total benefit when the claim is accepted.

This means the higher the claim benefit is, the more money you pay for representation, regardless of how much actual work was required to be performed by the representative.

Bourke Legal does not charge our clients a percentage of their benefit amount – not just in relation to claims for Income Protection, Total and Permanent Disability claims, or Critical Illness/Trauma, but in relation to all types of claims we act in.

We never have, and we never will.

After an initial, obligation-free first consultation, we issue our prospective clients with a detailed Costs Disclosure and Costs Agreement which sets out:

  1. What we have been retained to do;
  2. Who will perform the work;
  3. How we bill (by an hourly rate);
  4. A dollar figure estimate of the fees we expect to charge, having regard to the information we have been provided; and
  5. A dollar figure estimate of the cost of any reports we expect will need to be obtained to prove the claim.

If anything changes during the claim, we provide our clients with an updated Costs Disclosure and Costs Agreement, setting out the reasons for the change in estimate. Again, this estimate is a dollar figure, not a percentage. Our clients know exactly how much they will pay in legal fees if their Total and Permanent Disability claim is admitted.

We strongly implore anyone considering obtaining representation in relation Income Protection, Total and Permanent Disability claims or Critical Illness/Trauma to consider very carefully whether a representative who is not legally trained or certified, or who will charge a percentage of the total benefit, is the right choice.

The information in this blog is not intended to be legal advice, and should not be taken as such. If you have any queries, contact us now on 1300 026 875 to discuss your specific circumstances.

All initial consults with our firm are free of charge and all of our services are No Win, No Pay, with the exception of NSW workers compensation claims, which are funded by IRO and therefore free to all workers covered by the NSW workers compensation scheme.