If you are missing work because of a car crash injuries you got in a car accident, you may be wondering how to get paid for lost wages.

This is a pretty big deal.  How can you support your family and pay bills if no money is coming in?

If you have been involved in a car crash recently, you might be interested in speaking with a lawyer who handles personal injury cases. But, many people are hesitant to speak with a lawyer when they have a question because they aren’t sure that they really want to hire a lawyer, and they are afraid that the car crash lawyer they call will want to charge a fee or be angry if they aren’t ready to hire a lawyer.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

I wrote this article about getting paid while off work after a car accident because it is a common question people have after a car crash.  So here is what you need to know.

Get Wage Loss Proof From Your Employer If You Are Missing Work Because of a Car Crash.

The first thing you have to do to get your wages paid after a car crash is to be able to prove where you worked, and how much money per hour you make, and how many hours of work you lost.  This is usually gotten from your employer HR department.

Calculate Wage Loss Based On Employers Documents

Once you know your hourly rate, and how many hours of work you lost, it is simple to calculate the wage loss.  Here's the equation:

Hours Lost x Hourly Rate = Amount of Money To Be Claimed

So if you lost 2 weeks of work, you usually work 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, and you maek $15 dollars per hour, here's how we calculate what the dollar amount of your page loss is.

2 weeks of work is 10 days lost.
10 days times 8 hours her day is 80 hours.
80 hours times $15 per hour comes to a total of $1,200.00.

For a person who is on salary, we can calculate wage loss by estiamting 2000 hours worked per year, and assuming 2 weeks of vaation, the weeks worked are 50. 

So if you make $30,000 per year, and divide that by 2000 hours that comes out to $15.00 per hour.  From there, 2 weeks of lost work comes out to 80 hours x $15 and you are back at lost wages of $1,2000.00.

For people who make commission, we need records to calculate what you usually earned before you got hurt in the car crash.  I like to have at least several months of earnings or 1099's from the year before and the year of the injury to calculate an average weekly income.

Submit Your Calculation and Employer Form

After we get our info and do the math, we make sure we submit both to the insurance company.  If we did the math correctly and based it on numbers pprovided by ythe employer, there's little reasonfor fighting.  But that often does not stop insurance companies from doing so and denying a claim for lost wages after a car accident.

In Court We Need Tax Records

If your case goes to Court, the rule is that we need your tax records for the year before, the year of and the year after your injury to porove your age loss.  Most Judges will bar your claim if you haven't filed taes or did not turn over the tac returns when the Judge asked for them.

In Car Crash Wage Loss, You Wait Until The Case Is Over

In Workers’ Compensation cases, we can usually get TTD payments (Total Temporary Disability) weekly to keep money coming in.

But in car crash cases, there is no provision in the law for weekly or monthly payments to immediately replace a salary. Your options are making sure you are covered by a disability policy personally and/or at work, relying on savings and the help of your family, or as a last resort, considering a lawsuit loan.

I always caution my clients to consider their situation very carefully before taking out a lawsuit loan, even if they are short on money because of missing work because of a car crash.  Those companies really help injured people who are in a very tough spot. But the cost of the loans is very expensive and the interest rates are high. And, there are some companies which are better than others, as far as rates and how easy it is for me to work with them at the end of your case. Lawsuit loan companies never loan money unless a reliable, well-known lawyer is involved in the case. This is because lawsuit loan companies want a case accepted by a lawyer to kind of guarantee that the case is okay.

If you have been involved in a car crash or any kind of injury, or if you have questions, please feel free to give me a call at 312-500-4500.