Autism Diagnosis Critical Illness Cover

Crazycat89

Good Afternoon All,

I’ve just discovered this by chance, and had a little search online and on this forum but couldn’t locate much information. So thought I’d reach out here…

I’ve just been updating my pension and life cover information after my latest statements arrived and got onto reading the policy booklet for our life cover with Legal and General. We have Critical Illness cover and always assumed this was just for things like cancer.. but noticed further down it mentioned a ‘Total & Permanent Disability’ was also covered under Critical Illness.

Back in 2023 my partner was diagnosed with Autism, and further to this we applied and successfully received PIP for him. He is unable to work due to the severe stress, depression and anxiety caused by having autism.

i just wondered if anyone knew if this would be covered under the definition. Autism is classed as a lifelong developmental disability I believe, but as you can imagine the definition on the L&G guide for this is quite overarching.

As I mentioned, I’ve never even noticed this before but was just intrigued if anyone else has had experience with this?

Mark_d

https://cms.legalandgeneral.com/globalassets/personal/life-cover/_resources/documents/qgi14872.pdf
In my opinion stress, depression and anxiety can be managed and therefore wouldn't qualify as permanent.  As it happens, a close friend of mine has been off work for a good part of the last 15 years due to stress & depression, but he got a job last year and life is starting to work out for him.

Weighty1

There are different qualifying criteria for Total & Permanent Disability.  It can cover people based on either their ability to do their own occupation or potential certain everyday work tasks, the latter being the criteria for those with more manual based occupations.  

First and foremost look up what definiton of TPD your partners policy has.  If it's on an 'work tasks' definition then it is unlikely they would be able to claim whereas there could be more potential if it is on an 'own occupation. basis.  That said, as Mark_d eludes to, it's likely to be difficult to claim as you would need a specialist to confirm that your partner is totally and permanently unable to ever do their occupation again.  As you can probably imagine, this is no easy task as doctors don't like to, in effect, give up on the idea of successfully managing a condition.