Insurance policies and coverage

It is important that you read you insurance policies after a catastrophic event.  You may qualify for benefits, and if you don't read them, you will not know that.  If you have trouble reading documents like that, have someone else read them that could help. The only insurance company that told us about benefits that we qualified for without specifically asking for them was State Farm.  They called one day to tell me that we qualified for $10,000 just because Richard was wearing a seatbelt.  We needed to provide the police report for documentation, but that is all we had to do.

Richard's work provided information about some benefits that he would qualify for under things such as long and short term disability.  They basically filed that paperwork for us so that we wouldn't have to do it ourselves, which was very helpful. Sometimes only my signature was needed. (This is another example of why have medical power of attorney is so important.)

But there were policies that we had that if we had not read them, we wouldn't know that we qualified.  Some of these benefits amounted to very large amounts of money so please, read your policy.  Even your life insurance policy, which you would not think would be applicable in this situation, had benefits.

Don't assume that some kind of insurance will not cover you in some way.  Read them all.  Call them all and ask questions if necessary.  You don't want to not receive benefits that you are entitled to receive.