After being injured at work while out at sea, figuring out how to navigate your recovery and pay your bills can be challenging. After all, your inability to work will dry up your income, your ongoing monthly bills will eat away at your savings and your medical expenses can quickly leave you financially consumed. All these financial issues can leave you feeling overwhelmed, uncertain about the future and downright scared about how you’re going to keep a roof over your head and food on the table for yourself and your family.
Fortunately, maritime law requires that your employer provide you with financial resources during your time of need. This support is often referred to as maintenance and cure.
We’re going to look at each of these terms to give you a broader understanding of what maintenance and cure can do for you, but before we get there it’s important to note that these benefits are non-fault based. In other words, you don’t have to prove that your employer acted negligently to secure maintenance and cure benefits.
Additionally, you might be able to secure this support even if you had a pre-existing condition, so long as you can show that it was exacerbated by your work duties.
What is maintenance?
In short, maintenance refers to payments made by your employer to cover your room and board while you focus on your recovery. These payments will cover your necessary living expenses, such as your rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance and food costs. Maintenance won’t cover things like your cable and internet, though, and it’s not going to help you with your car payments. So, be prepared to seek out other financial resources to assist you with those expenses if you feel like you still need to incur them during your recovery.
Sometimes employers try to skirt their obligation to pay maintenance. If you suspect that’s the case in your situation, be sure to take note of any supporting evidence, as your employer’s failure to meet their obligation here opens them up to further liability, including the potential for punitive damages.
What is cure?
Cure refers to payments made by your employer to cover your reasonable medical expenses. First, your employer has to provide you with appropriate medical care while you are still at sea. Once you return to land, then your employer must pay for transportation to obtain medical care as well as all costs associated with necessary surgeries, diagnostic testing, rehabilitative care and medical devices. Your employer may try to encourage you to seek a second opinion as to your cure state and your need for ongoing medical treatment, but generally speaking you’re allowed to choose your own medical provider.
Maintenance and cure are just two of the legal remedies that may be available to you after suffering a maritime injury. While the process of protecting your financial interests might seem easy, it can actually be complex, with employers and insurance companies making the matter more complicated than it should be. And sometimes employers and insurance companies try to take advantage of injured workers who simply don’t know how to navigate the process, thereby cheating them out of the compensation they need and deserve.
Don’t let that happen to you. Instead, educate yourself on the law so that you have a firm understanding of what it takes to position yourself for success.