DWC024 - Benefit Dispute Agreement
Agreeing to Resolve a Benefit Dispute
The DWC024, the Benefit Dispute Agreement, puts a resolution of specific disputed issues in writing and makes it binding. It ends the issues listed on it, and only those.
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What this form is
The DWC024, called the Benefit Dispute Agreement, is the written agreement that resolves one or more disputed issues between you and the insurance carrier (the company paying benefits on the claim). Most workers meet it at a benefit review conference, called a BRC, the informal meeting where a DWC benefit review officer tries to help the parties resolve a dispute. If you and the carrier agree on an issue, the agreement goes on this form, both sides sign it, and it becomes binding once the designated DWC staff member signs it.
The DWC024 is an agreement, not a settlement. A settlement, done on the separate DWC025, is a final resolution of the disputed issues in the whole claim. A DWC024 resolves only the issues written on it. Everything not listed stays open, and both sides keep their right to future DWC proceedings on other issues. Settlements in Texas Workers' Comp: What's Allowed and What Isn't explains the difference in full.
What it resolves, and what it does not
The form describes "the issues in dispute" being resolved. Read that description as carefully as anything you will sign in the claim. If the dispute was about whether your disability continued through a certain date, the agreement resolves that period, not your entitlement afterward. If it was about one body part, it resolves that body part. Workers sign these believing the whole case is over; the form itself states that it is not a final resolution of all issues in the claim.
The reverse is also true, and it deserves the same care: an agreement can decide an issue against you. An agreement can establish that an injury is not compensable, meaning not covered. Signed and approved, that conclusion binds you the same way it would after a hearing.
What the rules do not allow
Some agreements are prohibited no matter what both sides want. An agreement cannot:
- Pay you cash to drop or not pursue your claim.
- Pay a lump sum of unaccrued income benefits, meaning benefits that have not yet come due, outside the narrow exceptions the law allows.
- Compromise periods of known disability, splitting the difference on weeks you were actually disabled.
- Resolve a dispute about impairment before you reach maximum medical improvement (MMI, the point where your condition has stabilized), or agree to an MMI date no doctor has certified.
Agreements that violate these limits can be set aside by DWC and are not binding. Note where this list lives on the form itself: page 2, after the signature page. Read it before signing, not after.
The five-day compliance rule
Once DWC approves the agreement, the carrier must do what it agreed to within five days of receiving the approved agreement, unless the agreement states its own compliance date. If the fifth day passes and the carrier has not paid or acted, contact the adjuster in writing with the date the agreement was approved, and if that does not resolve it, DWC154 is the complaint form that puts the violation in front of DWC.
Before you sign
- Confirm exactly which issues are listed, and say out loud which issues you believe remain open. The benefit review officer can confirm your understanding on the record.
- You are allowed to take time. Nothing requires you to sign at the meeting, and you may have an ombudsman (the free assistant from the Office of Injured Employee Counsel) or an attorney review the agreement first. The form's own certification line, acknowledging the agreement was read to the signer, exists because people sign these without understanding them.
- Understand what you give up on each listed issue. On those issues, the agreement takes the place of the hearing you will now never have.
- Keep a signed copy, and mark the compliance deadline on your calendar.
Benefit Review Conferences explains the meeting where most of these agreements are signed, and Settling Your Dispute at a Benefit Review Conference covers how resolution at a BRC works from start to finish.
The DWC024 is signed in a conference room, often the same hour it is first seen, and it binds like a judgment on every issue it lists. The carrier's representative signs these forms for a living; most workers sign one once, without help, with the prohibited-terms list sitting unread behind the signature page. If you have been handed a DWC024 and asked to sign it, or you signed one and the carrier has not done what it promised within five days, have one of our attorneys review it before the situation hardens. We review agreements like this every week, and asking us costs you nothing.
2 pages · Rev. 11/17
