Every long term disability policy imposes a time limit on your right to appeal. Under ERISA, the insurance company must give you at least 180 days to appeal.
Remember that the first ERISA appeal is an “administrative appeal” that goes right back to the insurance company. This appeal is done in the form of a letter and we usually include new or updated medical records.
In our experience it is critical that your first appeal be done correctly. Remember that in ERISA claims, your second appeal will go to federal court and almost certainly the federal court judge will apply the difficult “abuse of discretion” standard to your federal appeal.
Further, with very limited exception you will not be able to submit new evidence in your federal court appeal. So we prepare administrative appeals for our clients for two purposes: (1) to try to convince the insurance company to reverse its decision and award our client LTD benefits; and (2) to make the record stronger should we have to file suit in federal court.
Six months sounds like a long time but there is a lot of work to be done in that time window.
In non-ERISA private LTD claims we usually see a 180 day appeal deadline but because non-ERISA policies are essentially contracts between you and the insurance company, we occasionally see shorter deadlines.
In non-ERISA claims we urge our clients (and we can help) to obtain copies of all policy and claim documents as soon as possible so that we will not miss any claim filing deadlines.