How Lost Wages Factor Into Your Personal Injury Claim
Are you planning to seek compensation for an injury? If so, you'll be working closely with a lawyer to help ensure that you receive every penny that you are owed. One area that your personal injury lawyer will work closely with is determining what your lost wages are for your injury case. If you thought you were not eligible for loss wages, you may be owed more compensation than you think.
Hourly Vs. Salary Workers
A common mistake is assuming that you can't receive lost wages if your pay does not decrease. This is simply not true, since anyone that is employed can receive compensation for lost wages. It is pretty clear what your lost wages would be as an hourly worker, since you have an hourly rate that can be calculated based on the work days you have missed.
However, salary workers are a bit different. Your injury may be dipping into sick days that your employer gives you, and paid time off that you have earned. If you use all those days up, you then will be using unpaid medical leave to take the time off you need to recover. You should be able to calculate your average day rate based on your salary, and apply that to each day off that was taken.
Freelance Workers
Calculating lost wages as a freelance worker is a big harder to do, since the work schedule is not consistent. Thankfully, there are some strategies to prove how much you potentially lost due to the injury.
A good way to estimate your daily rate is to look at last year's tax returns. You can average how much you made per day and apply this for each work day that you are recovering. If your business is actively growing and you are earning more money now, you may have to use recent checks as a way to prove income. You can also provide proof of jobs you were offered and had to turn down due to the injury.
Future Lost Wages
It's easy to calculate days missed in the past, but don't forget about days you'll need to take off in the future. If you need to take time off for physical therapy or doctors visits during recovery, these will also require time off from work that must be accounted for. While it is hard to know exactly how many days you'll need to take off, you can make an estimate based off of how the recovery is progressing.