Tag Archive for: lost wages

Lost Wages in Personal Injury ClaimsLost Wages in Personal Injury Claims

Determining Lost Wages in a Personal Injury Claim

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When you’ve been injured due to someone else’s negligence, you may face physical pain, mental trauma, and lost wages. These financial challenges can push you to your limits, making an already difficult time even more painful.

That’s why it’s so important to work with an Alabama personal injury team who’s ready to fight for you. Attorney Aaron Luck at McPhillips Shinbaum helps clients like you seek justice from those who cause car accidents, falls, and other preventable incidents. Call us at 334-262-1911 to set up a time to meet.

Understanding What Constitutes Lost Wages

When you’re hurt because of someone else’s mistake, you will likely have to miss work. This means you’re not getting your usual paycheck, which can put significant strain on your family. Lost wages are not just the money you would’ve made from your regular hours at work. They also include any extra money you could have earned, like overtime, bonuses, or commissions. 

Plus, if you had to use up your sick days or vacation time because you were injured, that counts as lost wages too. Those hours are there for you to use when you need or want to use them—not to be taken from you by another person’s negligence.

Calculating Lost Wages: The Basic Formula

Determining the amount of money you’ve missed out on because you were unable to work due to an injury involves a straightforward process, but it’s one that requires precision. To calculate your lost wages, you need to start by understanding how much you earn per hour. If you’re paid hourly, this step is already done for you. However, if your income is based on a yearly salary, you’ll divide your annual earnings by the total number of work hours in a year to find your hourly wage.

Once you know your hourly rate, the next step is to multiply it by the number of hours you were unable to work due to your injury. This gives you the basic calculation of your lost wages. If your hourly wage is $15 and you missed 40 hours of work, you multiply 15 by 40 to get $600. This figure represents the wages you lost while recovering.

The Importance of Proper Documentation

Having all your paperwork in order plays a critical role when it’s time to prove how much money you missed out on because you were injured. You’ll want to keep a careful record of everything related to your job that shows you couldn’t work because of your injury. This means saving pay stubs, detailed records of work hours you missed, and any emails or letters from your employer about your injury and time off.

Gathering these documents does more than showcase your lost earnings; it provides undeniable evidence that backs up your claim. Without this proof, it’s much harder to show the full extent of your lost wages.

In a nutshell, proper documentation is your best ally in ensuring you get compensated properly. It turns your claim from being just your own words into something that can be clearly seen and understood.

Considerations for Self-Employed Individuals

For those who are self-employed, figuring out lost wages after an injury can feel overwhelming. Unlike traditional employees, self-employed individuals don’t generally have a set salary or hourly wages to easily calculate what they’ve missed out on. Instead, you need to dig a bit deeper into your business finances. This involves looking at your average income before the injury and comparing it to what you were able to earn while you were recovering.

The key is to have detailed records of your business activities. This means keeping track of invoices, client contracts, and any other proof of the work you were scheduled to do but couldn’t because of your injury. Evidence of a consistent income pattern prior to your injury will strengthen your claim, showing clearly how the injury led to a financial loss for your business.

For self-employed individuals, demonstrating lost wages is about painting a clear picture of your usual earnings and how the injury disrupted this flow. It’s important to prepare and organize your financial documents well.

Start Your Claim with McPhillips Shinbaum

When you’re ready to move forward with your personal injury claim, the team at McPhillips Shinbaum is here for you. Get started right away by contacting us online or calling us at 334-262-1911.

How Are My Lost Wages Proven in a Personal Injury Case?

How Are My Lost Wages Proven in a Personal Injury Case?

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A personal injury can hurt your quality of life in a variety of ways. For many, it’s not the pain of their injuries or the medical bills that worry them most—it’s the temporary or permanent loss of income. Unfortunately, it’s rare for insurance adjusters to agree to pay out lost wages unless you can prove your financial losses to their satisfaction.

That’s just one reason you want to work with an experienced personal injury lawyer after an accident. Find out how the team at McPhillips Shinbaum can help you after an injury—call us at 1-866-224-8664 to set up a consultation right away.

Recovering Your Lost Wages

After an accident, many victims are most concerned about getting back their lost wages. The majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and even the partial loss of a paycheck can be financially devastating. An unexpected accident that forces you out of work or into light duty can leave your family unable to cover their bills, put food on the table, or take care of other basic expenses.

That’s why it’s so important to document your lost wages thoroughly. While you may need to borrow money from loved ones or put some important expenses on your credit card in the interim, documenting your lost income gives you a chance to get it back from the liable party.

Calculating and Proving Lost Wages

There are several ways to calculate your lost wages, depending on how your pay is structured and how you keep your records. If you are a conventional W2 employee, you are paid hourly or you receive a salary. Keep track of the days you are off of work—they will likely be listed on your paystub or you can request proof on official company letterhead from your work. 

If you are paid hourly, you multiply your hourly wage by the number of hours you work each day, repeating for each day of work you have to miss. Don’t forget to include partial days if you are ever sent home early because of your injury. If you regularly worked overtime prior to your injury, you are also losing out on the opportunity to bring in that extra money—talk to your lawyer about calculating lost overtime income.

If you have an annual salary, the process is fairly similar. You can take your annual salary and divide it by the number of hours you work in a year. If you work a 40-hour week, that amounts to 2,080 hours per year. You can then multiply that number by the number of hours in a standard workday and the number of days missed.

The process is slightly more complicated if you are self-employed, a contractor, or otherwise untraditionally employed. You’ll likely need significantly more documentation to show the income you have lost. If you work with multiple clients, providing proof of projects you turned down and their value is crucial. You may also want to secure written statements from your clients outlining the work they had to divert to other contractors.

Your tax returns are also a valuable source of information. If you can show how much you tend to earn annually, you can extrapolate that to account for the income lost while you were injured. If your work is seasonal in nature, invoices and bank statements may prove how much you lost out on.

What If I’m Permanently Injured?

For those who are catastrophically injured, returning to work may be impossible. When this happens, you may be entitled both to wages you’ve already lost and lost future earning opportunities. This is a far more complex calculation and often requires the insight of a vocational expert. A vocational expert may be able to detail your likely career trajectory, future raises and promotions, and other important factors in calculating lost future income.

Start Your Claim with McPhillips Shinbaum

Don’t wait any longer to start your personal injury claim. With the help of a personal injury lawyer, you can demand compensation for your lost income, medical expenses, and other accident-related losses. The team at McPhillips Shinbaum is ready to fight for you. Schedule your consultation now by calling us at 334-262-1911 or messaging us online.