With all of the specialized, technical ”legalese” an ERISA attorney must know to do a proper job for a client, you wouldn’t think that knowledge of cooking and laundry would play a part. But, you would be wrong.

In Hannon v. Unum Life Insurance, 2013 W L 6821263 (S.D.Ind.), Unum tried to stop LTD benefits after paying them to an ERISA beneficiary for 10 years. One of Unum’s excuses for claiming the beneficiary was no longer entitled to benefits was that she could perform certain household chores and , therefore, was not disabled.

Battling insurance companies to get sick and injured people what is due them is a time-consuming and tiring occupation. Insurance companies fight ERISA claims like the devil. They assume that each claimant is a malingerer trying to get money without working for it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The vast majority of people want to work. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they didn’t have a job to go to. So, rather than stress the relatively few who are malingerers, insurers should consider each case as if the claimant would rather work than sit at home.

In Ms. Hannon’s matter, Unum began paying benefits to Ms. Hannon, a registered nurse, in March, 2001, when she became unable to perform her duties because of chronic pain. She was diagnosed with a rare disease that affects a person’s connective tissues, joints and blood vessel walls.

All of her seven doctors had found her disabled and unable to work for more than 4 hours at a time at a sedentary job. A theater company was able to give Ms. Hannom a flexible schedule to accommodate her disability, so she took a part-time job with it as a seamstress. When Unum discovered that claimant had a part-time job it sent an investigator to find out more.

When Unum learned that Ms. Hannon performed household chores in addition to working at the theater, Unum halted her LTD payments.

Unum said that the fact that she could do housework in addition to working at a part time job made it evident that she could perform 8 hours a day of sedentary labor, so LTD payments were terminated.

The Court disagreed stating that equating the ability to do casual household work to the requirements of performing the duties of full time employment was in error. Not only is household work different, but the ability to take breaks when needed is not part of an ordinary job description, sedentary or not.

The Court noted that Ms. Hannon’s daughter helped her mother with the housework and that claimant, at home, could take breaks whenever she felt it was necessary to rest because of pain.

In agreeing with Ms. Hannon that Unum cherry-picked her doctors’ reports, ignoring their clear finding that she could do no more than 4 hours a day in a sedentary job, the Court clearly distinguished the difference in the rigors of doing housework in your own home and working for a third party employer at a place of business.

That difference seems obvious to all but an ERISA insurer.