In Georgia, workers’ compensation benefits last up to 400 weeks — roughly seven and a half years — for most injuries, covering both wage replacement and medical care. Catastrophic injuries are the main exception and can qualify for lifetime benefits with no week cap. How long your specific benefits run depends on which type of disability you have, when you reach maximum medical improvement, and whether your injury meets Georgia’s catastrophic thresholds.
Temporary Total Disability: Up to 400 Weeks
If your injury leaves you completely unable to work, you qualify for Temporary Total Disability. TTD pays two-thirds of your average weekly wage, capped at $800 per week and with a $50 weekly minimum, and it can run for up to 400 weeks from the date of injury.1Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-261 – Compensation for Total Disability
TTD often stops before you hit that cap. If your doctor clears you to return to full-duty work, your benefits end. If your doctor releases you to work with restrictions, a different clock starts: after 52 consecutive weeks or 78 weeks total on restricted-duty status, your employer can convert you from TTD to the lower Temporary Partial Disability rate without Board approval, as long as the proper paperwork and notice are filed.2Justia. Georgia Code Appendix Rules and Regulations of the State Board of Workers Compensation 104 – Suspension and Reinstatement of Benefits A release to light duty is not the same as a release to full duty, but it starts the clock that downgrades your benefits.
Temporary Partial Disability: Up to 350 Weeks
When you can work but earn less than you did before the injury, Temporary Partial Disability covers part of the gap. TPD pays two-thirds of the difference between your pre-injury average weekly wage and what you can earn after the injury, capped at $533 per week. The maximum duration is 350 weeks from the date of accident, 50 weeks shorter than the TTD cap.3Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-262 – Compensation for Temporary Partial Disability
TPD also ends if you return to earning your full pre-injury wage or if a doctor finds you have reached maximum medical improvement with no remaining work restrictions.
Permanent Partial Disability: Based on a Body-Part Schedule
Once your doctor says you have reached maximum medical improvement but still carry a lasting impairment, Permanent Partial Disability may follow. PPD does not run indefinitely. Its duration is a doctor-assigned impairment percentage multiplied by the number of weeks the statute assigns to the affected body part.4Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-263 – Compensation for Permanent Partial Disability The main schedule values are:
- Arm: 225 weeks
- Leg: 225 weeks
- Hand: 160 weeks
- Foot: 135 weeks
- Eye (loss of vision): 150 weeks
- Hearing (one ear): 75 weeks
- Body as a whole: 300 weeks
A 10 percent permanent impairment to the arm, for example, produces 22.5 weeks of PPD payments. The weekly rate is two-thirds of your average weekly wage, up to the same $800 cap that applies to TTD. PPD is paid after TTD or TPD payments conclude, so it extends your total time receiving compensation past the temporary-disability phase.
Medical Benefits: A Separate 400-Week Clock
Medical coverage runs on its own timeline. For injuries on or after July 1, 2013, Georgia caps medical benefits at 400 weeks from the date of injury.5Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-200 – Compensation for Medical Care, Artificial Members, and Other Treatment and Supplies During that window, the insurance carrier must pay for all treatment that is reasonably necessary and likely to improve your condition or help you return to work, including surgery, hospital stays, physical therapy, prescriptions, and prosthetic devices.
When 400 weeks expire, the carrier’s obligation to fund your medical care ends unless your injury qualifies as catastrophic. Income benefits and medical benefits both max out around the same point, but they are tracked separately, and the medical cutoff is the one that most often catches people off guard. Injuries that occurred before July 1, 2013 are not subject to this cap and may receive medical benefits for a longer period.
Catastrophic Injuries: Lifetime Benefits
The 400-week ceilings on income and medical benefits do not apply when an injury is classified as catastrophic. Georgia law defines catastrophic injuries to include:
- Spinal cord injury producing severe paralysis of an arm, leg, or the trunk
- Amputation of an arm, hand, foot, or leg
- Severe brain or closed head injury shown by major sensory, motor, communication, or consciousness disturbances
- Second- or third-degree burns covering 25 percent or more of the body, or third-degree burns on 5 percent or more of the face or hands
- Total or industrial blindness
- Any other injury severe enough to keep the worker from performing their prior job and any other work available in substantial numbers in the national economy
The first five categories are essentially automatic if the medical records confirm the condition. The sixth is a catch-all, and it is harder to win because it requires proving you cannot do any available work, not just your old job. For injuries that have not already been accepted as catastrophic, the statute creates a rebuttable presumption during the first 130 weeks that a worker released to restricted duty does not have a catastrophic injury, which puts the burden on you to prove otherwise.
Once an injury is designated catastrophic, TTD continues with no week limit until a change in condition for the better is established, and medical benefits likewise have no cap. One caveat: when a catastrophic-injury claimant reaches full Social Security retirement age, a rebuttable presumption arises that the injury is no longer catastrophic. The insurer can use that presumption to request a hearing and potentially end lifetime benefits.6Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-200.1 – Rehabilitation Benefits; Catastrophic Injury Cases
Death Benefits for Dependents
When a workplace injury causes death, weekly income benefits go to the worker’s dependents. A surviving spouse is presumed fully dependent unless the couple had been living separately for 90 days or more before the accident.7Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-13 – Persons Presumed Next of Kin Spousal benefits end at the earliest of remarriage, a Board finding of cohabitation in a marriage-like relationship, reaching age 65, or 400 weeks of payments, whichever provides greater benefits to the spouse.
If weekly income benefits were already being paid to the worker before death, those weeks are subtracted from the spouse’s 400-week maximum. Total compensation payable to a surviving spouse as the sole dependent cannot exceed $320,000.8Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-265 – Compensation for Death Resulting From Injury
Dependent children receive benefits until they turn 18. A child who is physically or mentally incapable of earning a livelihood keeps receiving benefits past 18, and a child enrolled full-time at a college or university remains eligible until age 22.7Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-13 – Persons Presumed Next of Kin
How Benefits Can End Early or Be Reopened
Statutory maximums are ceilings, not guarantees. Either you or the insurer can file for a modification based on a “change in condition,” meaning a change in your physical status, wage-earning capacity, or other relevant circumstances since the last Board award or agreement.9Justia. Georgia Code 34-9-104 – Modification of Award or Order An insurer can use the process to cut off or reduce benefits if your condition improves. You can use it to increase or restart benefits if your condition worsens.
The filing window is two years from the date of your last TTD or TPD payment. If you are filing only for PPD, the window stretches to four years from the last income benefit payment. Once that window closes, the right to reopen is gone.
For non-catastrophic injuries, Georgia also enforces a forced-conversion rule. If you have been released to work with restrictions but are not actually working, and 52 consecutive weeks pass, the Board will find a change in condition for the better and convert you from TTD to TPD. No more than 78 total weeks of TTD can be paid while you remain capable of restricted work.
Settlements Can Shorten or End the Timeline
Many Georgia claims end through a negotiated settlement rather than running the full statutory clock. A stipulated settlement resolves a specific dispute while keeping the claim open for future medical treatment or other issues; the agreement has to address whether future medical care will continue, and if the parties close out medical, they must explain why.10Georgia State Board of Workers’ Compensation. Best Practices
A full settlement, sometimes called a washout, closes the claim entirely. You receive a lump sum and give up the right to future income and medical benefits. Washouts are final: if your condition worsens later, you cannot reopen the claim through a change-in-condition filing. One wrinkle worth flagging before you sign is Social Security Disability Insurance. A lump-sum settlement can trigger an SSDI offset because federal law caps the combined total of SSDI and workers’ comp at 80 percent of your pre-injury average earnings, which is why settlement agreements often spread the lump sum across the claimant’s remaining life expectancy to reduce the offset.11Social Security Administration. How Workers’ Compensation and Other Disability Payments May Affect Your Benefits