SDCERA Disability Retirement Attorneys

SDCERA Disability Retirement: Accommodation & Light Duty

If you are an SDCERA member who has been injured and is unable to perform your regular duties, your employer may offer you “accommodation” to try and keep you working. In this article our experienced disability retirement attorneys explain how an injured SDCERA member’s “accommodation” may impact their subsequent application for disability retirement.

How Accommodation Affects SDCERA Disability Retirement Cases

Typically, in SDCers disability retirement case, the injured member is unable to return to work at all. In this type of situation, most employees will submit their application for disability retirement to SDCERA fairly close to the time of the injury.

But in other situations, some injured SDCERA members are able to do some type of lighter work other than their regular duties, and will be accommodated by their plan sponsor while they try to recover from there injury or disability. This type of accommodation is sometimes called “light duty”.

If the accommodation is temporary, and was allowed simply so the disabled member had time to complete their disability retirement process, the light duty typically will not have any effect on the SDCERA evaluation and disability retirement award determination.

However, in other cases, some injured SDCERA members may be moved into a different job that they are able to perform – and so they do not file their disability retirement for several months or years or more after their injury. This then became problematic because their SDCers disability retirement will then be evaluated on the basis of the duties they were performing at their new job, and not on their regular duties that they were performing at the time of their injury.

In a very real way, this is unfair to those SDCERA workers who were moved to another job that they could perform long term, rather than to a temporary job while they applied for disability retirement. So it is very important to remember that your plan sponsor’s long-term accommodation of your injury CAN negatively impact your SDCERA application for disability retirement.

File for SDCERA Disability Retirement As Soon as Possible After Injury

For this reason, disability retirement applications should be filed as quickly as possible following your injury. This will help ensure that your disability (and inability to work) will be evaluated based upon your original duties and not based upon the “light duties” and/or the duties you were given as an accommodation.

In other words if you wait many months or years to file your application for SDCERA disability retirement, it will be evaluated based upon your ability to perform your current job, not your previous regular job.

Our SDCERA Attorneys Can Help

If you are a member of SDCERA and you have been injured it isa important to file your application for disability retirement as soon after your injury as possible.

Our experienced SDCERA disability and retirement attorneys have helped hundreds of SDCERA public employees, and we would be happy to talk to you.

We are one of very few Los Angeles area law firms that are highly specialized in Public Employees Disability Retirement. Our attorneys have filed hundreds of successful disability retirement applications and appeals and have obtained millions of dollars in disability retirement benefits for our clients.

Our attorneys can help disabled public employees obtain their disability retirement benefits from any public employee retirement system in California. If you are an injured police officer, firefighter, teacher, administrator or other public employee, who is applying for or appealing disability retirement benefits, call us today.

Free Consultation with a Disability Retirement Attorney: 800-964-8047

This article applies to members of San Diego Employees’ Retirement System (SDCERA); and does not reflect the rules, laws or regulations governing how other public retirement systems are administered. If you have question about another public employee retirement system, find your system, below – or call our office at: 562-622-4800

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Our highly specialized disability retirement attorneys are committed to ensuring that every injured or disabled public employee obtains the disability retirement benefits he or she has earned.

We have successfully filed hundreds of disability retirement applications and appeals – obtaining millions of dollars in disability retirement benefits in our four decades of legal service.

In our Disability Retirement Blog, our attorneys keep you updated on the latest, news and information pertaining to CalPERS, CalSTRS, OCERS, LACERA. SBcera, VCERA & SDCERA disability retirement.