Making a Lost Wages Claim
If you or someone you love were injured in a car accident due to another driver’s negligence, you may be out of work and wondering how to make a claim for lost wages. This is especially the case when another driver is responsible for your injuries and you have had to miss work or miss out on income earning opportunities as a result. In this blog post, we will discuss how to make a lost wage claim after getting in a car accident.
Compensation for Lost Earning Capacity
If you are regularly employed by someone else, collecting information about your income and wages is easy. You can simply just ask your boss or whoever your supervisor is to draft a letter including your name employment position, your rate of pay, and the number and the number of hours that you are usually working on each week. Additionally, you are going to want your boss or supervisor to write down or to include in the letter the number of hours or days you have missed from work due to your injury. On the other hand, if you are self-employed or obtain employment opportunities in an irregular fashion, making a lost wage claim becomes a bit more complicated. The reason for this is because you must show how much work time you lost and what you might have earned if you were able to work. A good piece of evidence that can be provided in these situations is billing or invoices that you usually send out to clients., a calendar showing appointments or jobs you have coming up or jobs you had to cancel due to your injury, and any documentation or letters showing or proving that your inability to work due to your injury.
Proving Your Lost Wages Claim
Once you can prove the number of wages or compensation you could have earned, you must show how much you would have earned if you would not have been injured. For those who have been working in a relatively stable fashion immediately before sustaining an injury, the average of time worked for a period is usually enough. Depending on the amount you were working and how much you were earning, you can calculate how much income or loss wages you are entitled to within some degree of certainty. If you work sporadically or irregularly, you can show the value of lost wages through evidence of what you earn in an entire fiscal year. Once you come up with that number you can divide it by weeks or by months. The best evidence of your yearly income is your personal income tax returns for the previous fiscal year. To use your tax return, you just need to show the portion of your tax return that shows your gross income. As for the rest of your tax return, it’s irrelevant and you don’t have to show that to your insurance company. If you had a particularly low earnings year during the previous fiscal year, include two or three years of tax returns to demonstrate the amount of income that you were supposed to make before getting injured.
Speak with Our Accident Lawyer in Miami Today!
If you are looking to make a lost wage claim due to a personal injury and want to discuss your options going forward, contact one of our personal injury lawyers today! Don’t allow negligent drivers to cost you money, time, or cause you aggravation. At Suarez and Montero, our policy is that if you don’t recover compensation, you won’t pay any fees for our services. Not to mention, we also provide free case consultations where we assess the circumstances surrounding your case and give you an objective overview of what steps you can take going forward if you decide to act against the at-fault party. For over 19 years, we have delivered quality legal representation for people who, through no fault of their own, have been injured in all types of motor vehicle accidents. We are available 24/7 to give you a free, no risk case consultation.
We serve clients throughout Florida including those in the following areas:
Miami-Dade: Aventura, Coral Gables, Doral, Fontainebleau, Hialeah, Homestead, Kendall, Miami, Miami Beach, Miami Lakes, North Miami, Tamiami, and Westchester.
Broward: Fort Lauderdale, Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines, and Weston; and Palm Beach County including Boca Raton, Lake Worth, and West Palm Beach.