DWC047 - Request to Advance Benefits
Requesting an Advance on Benefits
The DWC047 asks the state to approve an advance against your future workers' comp checks when financial hardship hits. The advance is real, the caps are real, and so is the repayment. Here is how it works.
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What this form is
The DWC047, Request to Advance Benefits, asks the Division of Workers' Compensation, called the DWC, to order the insurance carrier to pay you a portion of your future income benefits now. The carrier is the insurance company paying benefits on your claim. The form exists for financial hardship: a car repair you cannot cover, a deposit you cannot make, a bill that will not wait for weekly checks. Few workers know it exists.
Can I get an advance on my workers' comp checks?
Yes. If you are receiving income benefits on a Texas claim and you have a financial hardship, you can file form DWC047 asking the DWC to approve an advance. The amount is capped, the advance is repaid by deductions from your future checks, and you may make only three such requests over the life of the claim. It is your own money arriving early, not additional money.
The DWC decides, not the carrier. If the request is approved, you and the carrier both receive an order, and the carrier must pay the advance within seven days of it.
What the form requires
The form asks you to identify which benefit you are receiving, from temporary income benefits through impairment, supplemental, and lifetime income benefits. It asks for the amount you want. It asks you to explain the hardship in your own words: be concrete, with the bill, the amount, and the date it is due. And it asks you to propose how much should be deducted from each future check to repay the advance. That last box deserves the most thought, because you are setting the size of the cut you will live with for the following weeks.
The caps
Three limits control every advance.
- The amount is capped. An advance cannot exceed four times the maximum weekly amount for temporary income benefits set for your date of injury.
- Your remaining benefits must cover it. The DWC will not approve an advance larger than the future benefits expected on your claim. You have no easy way to calculate that remainder yourself, which is one reason requests get reduced or denied.
- Three requests, total. The limit is per injury, for the life of the claim. A new advance can be requested after a prior one is repaid, but each one spends one of the three. A small advance taken casually early in a claim costs a chance you may want badly later.
The repayment
The advance is repaid out of your future checks. Expect a deduction from every check for a stretch of weeks until the full amount is recovered, at the rate you proposed on the form. Set that rate honestly: a repayment schedule that leaves each week's check too small to live on defeats the purpose of the advance.
Know also that the repayment follows your claim, not your current benefit type. If your temporary income benefits end before the advance is repaid, the balance is recovered from whatever income benefits come next, including impairment income benefits. When the Carrier Takes Money Back: Advances, Overpayments, and Recoupment explains how these deductions work, how they interact with other recoupment, and how to confirm when they should stop, because checks carry no line items and workers cannot see the balance falling.
Request only what you need
The rule our office gives clients is short: ask for the amount that solves the actual problem, and not a dollar more. Every extra dollar borrowed is a dollar deducted later, plus a deeper cut to checks you will still be depending on. The advance is a good tool for a specific bill. It is a poor tool for general shortfall, because it makes the following weeks harder, not easier. If the problem is every week's check being too small, the wage figure behind your checks may be the real issue, and that is worth examining before you borrow against your own benefits.
Advances go wrong in two quiet ways: workers request more than the immediate need and then struggle through the repayment weeks, and workers lose track of the deductions, which can continue into a later benefit type where no one remembers why the checks are short. We help clients size the request, propose a repayment rate they can live with, and audit the deductions so repayment ends when it should. If you are considering an advance, or your checks are being docked for one and the math has never been explained to you, talk with one of our attorneys first. The conversation is free, and it is much cheaper than an advance taken at the wrong size.
3 pages · Rev. 08/22
