Concurrent Periods

John is a pretty careless guy. He’s known by friends to take a spill every now and then. That’s why John has a disability insurance policy.

Well, let’s start with what happened. John, unsurprisingly, fell and broke his hip. A week later, due to the broken hip, John fell and broke his arm. That gives John two disabling injuries.

John's disability insurance carrier uses concurrent periods clause to classify this situation as a single injury, rather than as two separate ones.

The insurer, therefore, pays one disability claim rather than two. Concurrent periods are the periods of time in which a disability policyholder has more than one disability (and more than a streak of bad luck).