Total permanent disablement describes your physical or mental condition following an injury of some description that is presumed severe enough to prevent you from carrying out your normal work, or any other usual activity for the rest of your life. Most workers are covered by Workers Compensation Insurance. This is an insurance that covers workers against any injury sustained while carrying out their work but if you are self employed, or not sufficiently covered by workers compensation, you will need separate total permanent disability insurance, known as TPD insurance. Total permanent disability is also the means by which a court awards damages to a sufferer of total and permanent disability for any injury sustained as a result of negligence, or the intentional attack of one person against another, that results in the condition known as total and permanent disablement.

Compensation Whilst Living

Total permanent disability insurance will pay you benefits while you live, unlike life insurance that only pays your beneficiaries on your death. Total permanent disability payments are therefore given should you happen to lose both your eyes through injury, both your legs, both your arms or any other trauma that leaves you totally and permanently disabled. It is a type of insurance that need not be a stand alone policy as it can be added on to your life insurance policy if you wish to do so. This would mean that you would be able to receive a lump sum payment, or a certain level of instalments while you are alive but critically injured. The money so paid would be deducted from your life insurance death benefits when you eventually die. It could be the difference to you being financially independent or having to rely on family or friends to look after you following a major injury.

Different Companies – Different Cover

Life insurance companies define total and permanent disablement conditions differently from one another. You therefore have to study what is being offered before you agree to take out the cover. For instance, there might be different pay outs for various injuries that leave you permanently disabled. This means that when you are offered cover make certain that you are covered against the most likely risk you run in your own specific day to day living. If you ride a horse regularly you would no doubt want to be covered against breaking your back but if you don’t ride a horse but do a lot of arc welding you would be more likely to make sure you are covered against blindness.

You need total disability insurance as much as you need life insurance, as your inability to earn enough money to keep yourself and your family in the conditions they have become accustomed to, is equally affected, whether you happen to die as a result of an accident or be left totally and permanently disabled.

Total and Permanent Disablement Different to Income Protection Insurance

There is also a distinct difference between total and permanent disablement and income protection insurance. With income protection insurance you will receive up to 75 percent of your average income if you are too sick, or so badly injured, that you can not attend to your work until you recover. TPD insurance on the other hand pays out when you become permanently disabled, to the extent that you are never expected to be able to return to your work ever again.

In order to find the best plan that suits your own particular lifestyle you should take your time to closely study all the various permanent disability insurances being offered. In this way you can find out exactly what is on offer for a certain premium cost. It will also be important to take note that a cheap total and permanent disability cover may not insure you for what you consider your main risks. If this is true you would be foolish to accept such a cover because of cost alone. You will be much better off paying a little more to get proper cover against the risks you see as being real in the type of life you lead.

Benefits of a Good Total and Permanent Disability Cover

Good total and permanent disability insurance can give you the following benefits:

• Help you obtain the expert medical care you need.
• Assist you in constructing any structural changes you may need to make to your home such as wheelchair ramps and handrails or a larger bathroom.
• Allow you to pay all your bills as they come in.
• Peace of mind in the knowledge that you can still care for your loved ones despite your incapacity.

As you are carving out a career, paying off a mortgage and raising a family, you can become very much in debt financially. If everything goes along alright you might well survive without anything too drastic occurring, but the world is full of people with dreams shattered, people who are now homeless, in poverty and living off government welfare, all because of what has been put down to bad luck. It need not be so. You can change your luck and avoid putting you loved ones through such hard times with a life insurance policy and matching total and permanent disability cover.