Yes, you can. Some adjusters and vocational rehabilitation professionals will tell you otherwise. But the law is clear: you may be retired and still have workers’ compensation benefits.
There are three things to pay attention to:
- You can draw workers’ compensation checks and Social Security retirement checks at the same time. With only a rare exception (when a claimant draws benefits beyond 500 weeks and if the date of injury is covered by the new law) workers’ compensation does not get a credit for Social Security retirement and Social Security retirement is not offset or reduced by workers’ compensation.
- Your right to weekly checks is based on your capacity to earn. Thus you cannot simply elect to retire and stop looking for work and expect to get workers’ compensation. You can retire, draw your retirement, keep looking for work, and draw workers’ compensation checks.
- If you decide you don’t want to hassle with looking for work and are just going to take a retirement it’s likely the Industrial Commission will grant a defense request to stop your weekly workers’ compensation checks. But the adjuster will still have to provide medical treatment for your injury.
