Housekeeping and Home Maintenance Benefits Under SABS: A Frequently Overlooked Recovery
What Housekeeping and Home Maintenance Benefits Cover
Ontario’s SABS provides benefits for the cost of housekeeping and home maintenance activities that an injured claimant performed before the accident and can no longer perform — or can no longer perform to the same extent — as a result of injuries. Covered activities include interior housekeeping, laundry, cooking, shopping, lawn and garden maintenance, snow removal, and standard household upkeep tasks the claimant performed without assistance prior to the accident.
Who Qualifies
Under the standard SABS benefit structure, housekeeping and home maintenance benefits are available only to catastrophically injured claimants. For non-catastrophic injuries, these benefits must be purchased as optional coverage (OPCF 43) before the accident. Many claimants with serious but non-catastrophic injuries discover too late that they have no SABS entitlement to housekeeping compensation.
Maximum benefit: The SABS housekeeping and home maintenance benefit is capped at $100 per week. While modest, it provides meaningful assistance over a multi-year recovery and should not be overlooked. Where the claimant employed a professional housekeeper before the accident, the cost of a replacement service is recoverable in the tort claim as an economic loss independent of SABS.
Documentation Requirements
To access housekeeping benefits, the claimant must demonstrate through medical evidence that injuries prevent them from performing specific household tasks they formerly performed. Receipts for housekeeping services engaged since the accident, combined with a treating occupational therapist’s functional assessment confirming limitations, provide the strongest evidentiary foundation for these benefits.
Hable con un abogado
Cada caso es único. Obtenga una consulta gratuita y sin compromiso con Ben Azimi.
Llame al 416-900-4128 — Consulta gratuita