Many employees receive benefits from a short-term disability plan as part of their employment compensation. This 
means if you are either fully or partially disabled for a period of time they will pay you 60% – 80% of your lost wages for a certain duration, usually not exceeding six (6) months to a year. After that time period, those benefits will be exhausted and you will no longer be able to obtain your lost wages from that particular policy. If you have long-term disability you will then be able to make a claim under that policy and receive lost wages for a more significant period of time. These policies are typically purchased and paid for under a Supplemental Insurance benefit package or is simply offered by your place of employment to all employees. Many places of employment do not give much detail about short and long term disability coverage therefore many people don’t realize they have this type of coverage. Furthermore, you may have opted for it years ago since the coverage generally does not have a significant premium attached to it, you may not have even noticed the deduction taken out of your paycheck. Thus, it is important to look for all possible sources of insurance coverage to determine whether you can be compensated for lost wages in a shot term or longer duration than your PIP coverage.
It should be noted that most short and long term disability and PIP will only pay up to 60% of your lost wages leaving the remaining 40% of the lost wages in the case to be recovered under the bodily injury portion of a policy. It should also be mentioned that even if bodily injury coverage is not available for the party that caused the crash, you should be able to get the same lost wages through any uninsured or underinsured motorist policy.
