Nobody Pays You to Be Ill

Every West End production carries understudies.

They rehearse separately, they are paid to be available, and most of them go whole runs without going on. The system exists because a production has fixed costs, a booked audience and no capacity to go dark for a fortnight because one person has a throat infection. Redundancy is expensive and it is built in anyway, because the alternative is worse.

The self-employed Bar is also a performing profession. It has no understudies.

What happens on the day, and what happens after

For a short absence, chambers handles it beautifully. The brief goes back, the clerks work the phones, someone picks it up, and by the following morning the thing has been absorbed with a minimum of fuss. Centuries of practice have gone into making that work.

For eighteen months it is a different problem entirely.

No sick pay arrives, because there is no employer to pay it. Chambers rent, clerks' fees, practising certificate and insurance continue regardless, because they are costs of having a practice rather than costs of working. And the practice itself, which took fifteen years to build, is from the point of view of everyone instructing you a single person who is currently unavailable. Solicitors form new habits faster than anyone would like to think.

The wording is the policy

Income protection is the cover that addresses this, and the detail matters more here than in almost any other profession.

The critical term is the definition of incapacity. An own occupation definition asks whether you are unable to perform your own job. Weaker definitions ask whether you can perform any occupation you are suited to by training or experience, or apply an activities-of-daily-living test. For someone whose work is advocacy, that distinction is the entire value of the policy. A condition that makes it impossible to be on your feet in court for a day at a time, or to sustain the concentration a heavy trial demands, may leave you perfectly capable of other work.

The deferred period is the gap between stopping work and the policy paying. Longer deferred periods cost less, which makes them tempting. The right length is the one your reserves can genuinely absorb, and at the Bar that calculation has to account for the fact that receipts continue arriving for months after work stops. Aged debt flatters the early part of an absence and then falls off a cliff.

Then there is indexation, and the simple question of whether the cover still reflects the practice. A policy taken out at eight years' call and never revisited will not describe a silk's income.

The one nobody mentions

Cover bought young is cheap and stays that way. Cover bought after something has happened may not be available at all.

That is an uncomfortable thing to write, because it sounds like a sales line, and this site does not do those. But it is simply how underwriting works, and it is the reason this is one of the few areas where the timing genuinely is the decision.

None of this is cheerful reading. It is the part of a financial plan that only matters on the worst day of a career, which is a poor reason to leave it in the too-difficult pile.

This article is general information based on legislation and market practice at the date of publication, and is not personal advice or a recommendation of any particular policy or provider. The availability, terms and cost of protection cover depend on individual health, occupation and circumstances, and policy definitions vary between insurers.

Altor Wealth Management LLP advises barristers and other self-employed professionals from our offices in Hook, Hampshire, and across Surrey, Berkshire, Sussex and Kent.