DWC051 - Request for a Lump Sum Payment of Impairment Income Benefits (IIBs)

What this form is

The DWC051, Request for a Lump Sum Payment of Impairment Income Benefits, asks the insurance carrier, called the carrier, to pay the rest of your impairment income benefits in a single payment instead of weekly checks. Impairment income benefits, called IIBs, are the checks paid for permanent damage after your recovery levels off; Impairment Income Benefits (IIBs) in Texas Workers' Compensation Claims explains how they work. Taking them as a lump sum is called commuting them, and it cannot be undone. The signature line on this form gives up supplemental income benefits and lifetime income benefits for this claim, permanently. Everything else on this page exists to make sure you understand that sentence before you sign.

The two requirements

The law allows a lump sum only if both of the following are true.

1. You have returned to work for at least three months. Not started work, not accepted an offer: three months back on the job.
2. You are earning at least 80 percent of your average weekly wage. Your average weekly wage, called your AWW, is the wage figure your claim is built on.

The requirements are statutory, meaning the Legislature wrote them into the law itself. Neither you, nor the carrier, nor an agreement between you can waive them. The carrier must approve or deny the request within 14 days of receiving it, and it may deny for a third reason as well: if your impairment rating is being disputed, the request can be denied on that basis alone, sometimes before you know a dispute exists.

Does taking a lump sum of IIBs cost me SIBs later?

Yes, permanently, and for some workers that is the most expensive signature of the claim. Supplemental income benefits, called SIBs, are quarterly benefits available after IIBs end to workers whose impairment rating is 15 percent or higher and whose earnings have not recovered. One of the eligibility conditions is that you did not take your IIBs as a lump sum. Sign the DWC051 and receive the payment, and SIBs are gone for the rest of the claim, along with lifetime income benefits. There is no path back.

Measure what that can mean. SIBs can continue quarter after quarter until 401 weeks after the injury, roughly seven and a half years. For a worker with a 15 percent or higher rating, the lump sum trades a few remaining weeks of IIBs for what could be years of quarterly benefits. In one claim our office handled, the SIBs given up would have been worth almost five years of potential checks. Supplemental Income Benefits (SIBs) in Texas Workers' Compensation Claims explains what SIBs pay and what they require, and it is required reading before this form.

If your rating is below 15 percent, SIBs were never available to you, and the forfeiture costs you nothing. That is the one situation where this form is a straightforward decision.

The workaround that does not work

Workers who want the lump sum but do not meet the three-month or 80 percent requirement sometimes ask whether the parties can simply agree around the statute, for example with a benefit dispute agreement on form DWC024. They cannot. The Division of Workers' Compensation, called the DWC, will not approve an agreement that fails the statute's requirements. We have seen the attempt made with the carrier willing, and it still failed: the Division does not approve what the law does not allow, and the carrier's own attorneys recognize that such an agreement would not hold. If you do not meet the two requirements, there is no paperwork route to the lump sum. The honest answer is to wait until you meet them, or to keep the weekly checks.

The boxes that matter

The form asks you to supply your own maximum medical improvement date, your impairment rating, and your weekly IIBs amount. These entries come from your records, called the certification on form DWC069 and your payment notices, not from memory. An error in any of them invites denial and delay.

Run the numbers before signing anything

The arithmetic takes an evening and can be worth years of benefits. Add up the remaining IIBs weeks you would receive as the lump sum. Then estimate the SIBs you would forfeit: the quarterly amounts, multiplied by the quarters remaining before the 401-week limit, discounted by how likely you are to qualify each quarter. The income benefits calculator on this site produces the weekly figures. If your rating is 15 percent or higher and your earnings are uncertain, the SIBs total is usually the larger number. A lump sum that buys a truck today and costs five years of checks is not a windfall. It is a bad trade signed under pressure.