Retraining or a Lump Sum? How to Think About the Choice

At some point in a Nevada vocational rehabilitation file, many injured workers are offered a lump sum payment instead of a retraining or placement program. NRS 616C.595 governs it. The decision is yours, it is usually final, and it deserves more thought than it often gets.

What you are being offered

Broadly, a cash payment calculated against the value of the program you would otherwise have received, with a floor commonly discussed around 55 percent of that value. You take the money and the vocational rehabilitation part of your claim closes.

When it can make sense

• You already have a job lined up that fits your restrictions and pays close to what you were earning.
• You have skills or licenses that transfer directly and you do not need retraining to use them.
• You have a specific, costed plan of your own that the program would not fund.
• You are close to retirement and returning to full-time work is not the goal.

When it usually does not

You have spent your career in one physically demanding line of work. Twenty years in a kitchen, on a dock or on a housekeeping floor builds real skills, but converting them into work you can still do usually takes structured help. A cheque does not do that work for you.

You have limited English. A retraining program includes a counselor who can open doors with employers. On your own, that barrier is much harder.

The money looks large compared to your current income. It almost always does, because you are comparing it to disability benefits rather than to a career. Compare it to what a year or two of earnings at a restored wage looks like instead.

You do not yet know what you would retrain into. Deciding to take money because no one has shown you a good plan is not the same as deciding a plan would not help.

Questions to ask before you sign

• What program would I be giving up, specifically, and how long would it run?
• What wage would that program be aiming at?
• What is my average monthly wage figure, and how does the plan compare to it?
• If I take the money and it does not work out, what happens?
• Has anyone done a transferable skills analysis, and can I read it?

Get advice

This is a decision with long consequences and there are people whose job it is to advise you on it. Talk to an attorney before signing. Nothing on this page is advice about your claim.

General information about Nevada workers' compensation, not legal advice.