Glossary
Activities of daily living, defined
The basic self-care tasks that care and disability policies use to measure whether someone needs help: bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, continence and transferring between a bed and a chair. Insurers count how many a person cannot do without hands-on or standby assistance.
In practice
Most care policies pay when the insured needs help with two of the six, or has a cognitive impairment such as dementia that requires supervision, and a doctor or the carrier's nurse certifies it. Which tasks are on the list and whether standby assistance counts vary by policy, and a policy that omits bathing, the task people usually lose first, will pay later than one that includes it. The same measure appears in chronic illness riders on life policies and in some hybrid products. It is a functional test, not a diagnosis: a person with a serious illness who can still manage all six does not qualify, and a person with no diagnosis who cannot do two of them does.
A worked example
Suppose a woman with advanced arthritis can still eat, use the toilet and manage continence, but needs someone to help her bathe and dress each morning. Under a policy with a two-task trigger she qualifies for benefits after the waiting period, and the policy pays for a home aide at, say, $30 an hour for two hours a day. Hypothetical figures.
Applies to: Life Insurance