Cooks Hill: how car accident compensation works

The same principles apply, but proving earnings takes more paperwork. Tax returns, business activity statements, accountant's records and contracts help show what you earned before the accident. If your business was growing, records from the year before the crash can matter. Gather them early, because the insurer relies on them for weekly payments, and they matter again in any damages claim.

Generally 3 years from the accident. A later damages claim may be allowed only with a full and satisfactory explanation, so don't count on it. The earlier marker matters too: lodge within 2 years if you want weekly payments to continue past 2 years while the claim is pending. Statutory benefits run to much shorter deadlines of their own, so make sure that claim is in first.

Only if your whole person impairment is more than 10%, and only as part of a common law damages claim. That means another driver must have been at fault, you must not have been mostly at fault, and your injury must be more than a threshold injury. If your impairment is 10% or less, you may still claim damages for lost earnings.

They can. The usual end point is 104 weeks, but a common law damages claim you've lodged that is still pending can extend them: to as long as 156 weeks where whole person impairment is 10% or less, or 260 weeks where it's more than 10%. The extension only works if the damages claim went in within 2 years of the accident, so the timing of your claim matters.

Possibly, and you don't have to work it out alone. Close relatives who were financially dependent on the person who died, such as a spouse or de facto partner, parent, child or sibling, may be able to claim for the financial support and domestic services they've lost. This generally depends on the person who died not being mostly at fault. Try to lodge within 3 months of the crash; claims must generally be made within 3 years. CTP Assist (1300 656 919) can connect you with a Principal Liaison Coordinator.

Under the NSW CTP scheme, treatment and care costs, and unpaid help from family and friends (called gratuitous care), generally sit outside a common law damages claim. Treatment and care stays with statutory benefits instead, for as long as the benefit periods that apply to you allow. Damage to your vehicle isn't part of a CTP claim at all, because CTP covers personal injury only.