Editorial policy

Who writes and reviews the guides

The guides are written by Stephanie Prestridge, Co-Founder of Life Claim and the attorney responsible for this site.

Primary sources only

We cite statutes from official legislature websites, federal regulations from the eCFR, and court decisions from the issuing court or an official reporter. We do not cite a rule we have not read in its primary source. Where a point still needs verification, it is omitted until it is confirmed.

Quoting and describing sources

• Quotation marks mean the source’s own words. Anything we put in quotation marks matches the cited text word for word. If we shorten a quote or change a word to fit the sentence, the change appears in [brackets] and a cut appears as an ellipsis.
• We say when we are relying on someone else’s summary. If our only account of a decision comes from a later court describing it, the citation tells you that, for example “as described in” the later case.

What a rule covers

• Whose law it is. Federal and state rules often differ, and so do the rules for a group policy run through an employer plan governed by ERISA versus a policy someone bought on their own. Each page says which of these a rule applies to.
• General information only. The guides describe how these rules usually work. Nothing here predicts how a particular claim will turn out.
• Checked before it goes up. Every statement about the law is compared with the source cited for it before the page is published.
• Numbers that move. Interest rates, dollar limits and similar figures can change, so we give the date or year they apply to wherever they appear.

State pages

A state page is published only when it has its own substance: that state’s statutes and cases, its deadlines and interest rules, and how they differ from other states. We do not publish pages that swap a state name into the same text.

Corrections

To report a possible error, email [email protected]. Reported errors are checked against the primary sources listed on the page, and a corrected page shows a new “checked” date.

Use of automation

We may use software to help draft and format pages. A person reviews every page against its cited sources before it is published.