Chicago Disability Claim Attorney for Skilled Trades & Services

Skilled trades and service workers build, fix, maintain, and operate the systems the rest of us depend on every day. These jobs typically require a keen eye for detail, quick reflexes, strong backs, and the stamina needed to push through a full day, much of which is spent on your feet.

However, whenever an injury or diagnosis affects your work, the loss you feel isn’t just physical. You also lose your livelihood, one you built up over years of training and hard-earned experience.

This is precisely why long-term disability insurance exists. It replaces income when you can no longer perform the job you built your life around. And yet, it’s not uncommon for insurers to underestimate what skilled trades and service work actually requires. In fact, denials for tradespeople and service workers are common. Thus, it’s critical to understand how your policy defines a disability and what evidence you need to prove your case. It could make the difference between a denial and an approval.

Bartolic Law: Turning Denials Into Payments

Bartolic Law is a Chicago-based firm built around one mission: turning benefit denials into paid claims. The firm’s attorneys, including Michael Bartolic, Cheslynn Litke, and Toby Bartolic, focus exclusively on long-term disability claims, appeals, and lawsuits under ERISA, the federal law that governs most employer-sponsored disability plans.

For each client, Bartolic Law builds a tailored strategy instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach. The firm’s priority is always securing fast payouts of benefits, ideally without the delay and cost of a lawsuit. Meanwhile, they remain fully prepared to litigate if an insurer leaves no other option.

The firm operates based on six core values: credibility, compassion, authenticity, innovation, transparency, and a genuine commitment to helping others. In practice, that means Bartolic Law only accepts cases it believes have merit, keeps communication open with clients and insurers alike, and treats every appeal with the same rigor it would bring to a trial.

Who We Serve

Skilled trades and service workers reach out to Bartolic Law in a range of situations, including:

• A diagnosis threatens the qualifications your job requires. You may be sidelined by a new medication, a physical setback, or a fitness, licensing, or certification standard you can no longer meet. Despite this, you could still handle some type of work.
• The physical demands of your job have become too much to sustain. Pain, weakness, limited mobility, spinal problems, or fatigue can turn lifting, climbing, standing, driving, or running equipment into an all-day battle your body can’t win anymore.
• Your focus, precision, or judgment isn’t what it used to be. Brain fog, migraines, vision changes, tremors, or medication side effects can quietly erode the concentration and split-second decision-making your trade depends on.
• You can still work, but not in the career you have spent years building. Maybe you’re capable of lighter or administrative work, but the specific physical, technical, or safety-sensitive duties you trained years to perform are no longer within reach.
• Your insurer doesn’t understand what your job really involves. Too often, insurers zero in on the easiest, most sedentary slice of an occupation while ignoring the field work, physical exertion, travel, technical precision, or safety responsibilities that make up the bulk of your day.

How Bartolic Law Approaches Your Claim

Filing for long-term disability benefits as a tradesperson or service worker follows a general path, although every case has its own wrinkles.

1. Filing the initial claim. You must notify your insurer promptly and complete a claim packet that includes medical records, employer statements, and a detailed description of your job’s physical and technical demands.
2. Insurer review. Next, the insurer looks at your policy’s definition of disability and evaluates your claim against it. Unfortunately, this is the step where many skilled tradespeople run into trouble. Insurers frequently rely on generic job descriptions that fail to capture what your work actually requires.
3. Approval, denial, or termination. The insurer makes a decision. If your claim was approved, benefits should start after any applicable elimination period. On the other hand, if your claim was denied, you have the right to appeal. Alternatively, if your benefits were cut off after being approved, don’t worry; you’re not alone. This commonly happens when a policy shifts from an “own occupation” to an “any occupation” standard. If this happens, an appeal is also appropriate.
4. The ERISA appeal. Under ERISA, you typically have 180 days to submit an appeal, and this is often your last chance to add evidence to the record before litigation. This step matters enormously. Bartolic Law builds appeals with vocational evidence, medical documentation, and, where useful, photo or video evidence of daily struggles to counter the insurer’s file-based review.
5. Litigation, if needed. If the insurer still refuses to pay after a well-supported appeal, Bartolic Law is prepared to file an ERISA lawsuit and litigate the case to judgment.

Two legal concepts come up constantly in skilled trades claims. The first is the “own occupation” versus “any occupation” standard. Most group policies pay benefits for the first 24 months if you can’t perform your specific occupation, but then they switch to a stricter standard requiring you to be unable to perform any occupation reasonably suited to your background. Insurers frequently exploit this shift to cut off benefits.

The second is the improper application of 24-month limitations for conditions like chronic pain or mental health struggles, particularly when those symptoms stem from an underlying physical disability that should not be subject to the shorter payout window.

Why Choose Bartolic Law?

• A singular focus on LTD and ERISA. This isn’t one practice area among many. It’s the entirety of what the firm does, which means deep familiarity with how insurers evaluate claims for physically demanding occupations.
• A track record insurers recognize. The firm has recovered millions of dollars for clients, fought every major disability insurer, and has never lost a disability case in litigation.
• A 90-day internal target for appeals. Bartolic Law aims to complete appeals within 90 days, and unlike some firms, fees don’t increase if a case takes longer.
• Evidence that humanizes your claim. Rather than letting your case become a stack of numbers reviewed by an algorithm, the firm builds a record using photo and video evidence alongside medical documentation to show the real, daily impact of your condition.
• Financial expertise in claim valuation. Michael Bartolic’s background in accounting and finance helps ensure that settlement or buy-out offers reflect the true present value of your claim, not a lowball figure built on inflated assumptions.
• A firm that treats this as a practice, not just a business. Bartolic Law was founded on a commitment to helping people through one of the hardest periods of their working lives.

Secure the Benefits You Earned

Your trade demanded years of training, physical toughness, and technical skill. When a health condition takes that away, insurers are supposed to step up to the plate, paying what your policy promises rather than hiding behind a job description that doesn’t match reality.

Bartolic Law has spent years fighting for skilled trades and service workers throughout Chicago and beyond, and the firm is ready to look at your situation. Schedule a free case evaluation with Bartolic Law today.