Doing something you love for a living is a dream come true for everyone.

However, life is unpredictable, and it can easily throw a curveball that can completely transform your reality. Being prepared for such situations is essential to remain calm and secure even in the most stressful situations.

Long-term disability insurance is designed to protect your income and help you recover from a serious illness or injury. Both short-term and long-term disability insurance policies are available to employees, but long-term ones are related to health conditions that keep individuals out of work for three months or longer.

As such, there’s a specific connection between long-term disability insurance and pregnancy. How are these two notions related, though, and can pregnancy be enough of a reason to get long-term disability insurance?

Read through this article to learn everything you need to know about this type of disability coverage.

What Is the Connection Between Long-Term Disability Insurance and Pregnancy?

As mentioned above, long-term disability insurance focuses on financially securing individuals suffering from serious health conditions. You can also get specific disability insurance for individuals. Before starting receiving disability insurance benefits, individuals must submit viable documentation stating they’re unable to perform specific professional duties.

The most common reasons for filing a long-term disability claim are:

• Cancer
• Musculoskeletal disorders
• Mental health issues
• Serious physical injuries
• Pregnancy

The exact policy details, including how many funds you’ll receive and how long the insurance will cover you, depend on numerous factors that are unique to every case.

How Can Long-Term Disability Insurance Cover Pregnancy?

The requirements for long-term insurance during pregnancy

Because such a wide array of health injuries, illnesses, and conditions can be covered by long-term disability insurance, it’s challenging to pinpoint the exact requirements for this type of insurance during pregnancy.

Nevertheless, the most important factor is the core definition of disability. Depending on how a policy defines disability, the requirements for long-term insurance during pregnancy will differ.

For instance, some policies’ requirements include injuries that prevent individuals from completing their typical duties but allow them to participate in some other tasks. Other policies won’t provide benefits if individuals are capable of working in another profession, even if it pays less.

Therefore, how a company and policy approach the definition of a disability will greatly determine whether someone receives the disability insurance benefits or not.

When it comes to pregnancy, it isn’t a disability on its own. Women with healthy and safe pregnancies can’t receive long-term insurance benefits. However, because pregnancy can lead to numerous complications along the way, many disabilities can occur during pregnancy or after giving birth and affect the professional life of the expecting and new mothers.

Disability During Pregnancy

Pregnancy is a complex process that involves a lot of changes happening in the woman’s body. Although a miraculous process in most cases, around 20% of pregnant women experience some kind of pregnancy complications and health concerns.

Common medical conditions can arise during or after pregnancy and prevent women from completing their usual duties. Even though some conditions are more severe than others, pregnancy complications are also the most common pregnancy-related disabilities that allow women to receive long-term insurance benefits from their insurance policies.

Because of the common occurrence of pregnancy complications, many women are forced to take some time after work, recover, and gather the necessary strength to go back into their routine.

Eligibility

Who exactly is eligible for long-term disability insurance?

Pregnancy in itself isn’t enough of a precondition to start receiving benefits from insurance policies. However, if a woman suffers from a more serious complication during pregnancy that prevents her from completing daily duties, she can apply for long-term disability insurance. The same goes for women who suffer from health complications during or after childbirth.

In both cases, women might receive one of the several insurance benefits plans. They’ll have fewer working hours, they won’t be obliged to complete certain tasks, or they’ll be fully covered for their absence from work. The details of the insurance plan will depend on the career field and type of health condition, among other deciding factors. Make sure to also check reasons for long term care insurance rejection.

Pregnancy-Related Disabilities

Even though many women experience fairly simple and expected pregnancies and childbirths, some complications are relatively common. Some common pregnancy-related disabilities are:

• Hyperemesis gravidarum (severe nausea and vomiting)
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Cardiomyopathy
• Respiratory problems
• Gestational diabetes
• Iron-deficiency anemia
• Embolism
• Preeclampsia and eclampsia
• Uterine rupture
• Postpartum hemorrhage
• Infections or sepsis
• Preterm labor
• Cesarean section (C-section)
• Miscarriage (pregnancy loss)
• Stillbirth
• Postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis

Going through any of these disabilities requires some time for rest and recovery. Besides recovering from a physical trauma of childbirth or a C-section, more and more new mothers develop postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), even up to 15% of all women experience postpartum depression.

These conditions can cause numerous other issues that prevent expecting and new mothers from doing their job well while simultaneously caring for themselves and their babies. In these situations, long-term disability insurance and pregnancy can go hand in hand perfectly to help out these women.

What Are the Pre-Existing Conditions?

While the US already has the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a passed law covering employees who want to take up to a 12-week leave for health and caregiving reasons, this law has its disadvantages. Namely, it’s unpaid leave, even though it’s job-protected.

While FMLA covers pregnancy-related disabilities, not all employees are eligible for this kind of leave, nor can they all afford unpaid leave. Moreover, many women reserve this leave to prolong their maternity leave, so a long-term disability insurance plan might come in handy for those suffering from complications during or after pregnancy.

However, before relying on long-term insurance, it’s crucial to find out more about the pre-existing conditions related to this plan.

Long-term disability benefits pay a portion of the total salary amount throughout the entire period spent on disability leave. In most cases, individuals are paid between 50% and 60% of their regular salary.

To become eligible for long-term insurance benefits, one must naturally have a covered disability. Choosing to stay at home during or after pregnancy as well as giving birth aren’t viable conditions, as they don’t represent any kind of disability.

Nevertheless, if certain complications arise during pregnancy, during childbirth, or after pregnancy, they can be defined as a disability if the resulting condition prevents individuals from completing their day-to-day tasks.

Still, benefits received through a long-term disability insurance plan don’t kick in until six months after the disability occurs. Essentially, women suffering from pregnancy complications and getting approved for a disability plan often receive the funds long after their condition gets resolved.