Frequently Asked Questions

You are eligible to participate in the disability insurance plan if you are a CTA member who is:

• In good standing,
• Actively employed under an annual contract, and
• Working an average of 15 hours or more per week over a 4-week period.

After your coverage is effective, childbirth is covered like any other pre-existing disability. As an administrative claims management practice, you will be considered disabled four weeks prior to your due date and six weeks following a normal delivery or eight weeks following a C-section. Medical complications that result in disabilities outside of these guidelines will be considered based on medical evidence records. All plan provisions, including those regarding disability, medical necessity and pre-existing conditions apply.

Yes, Disability insurance covers disabilities that occur on or off the job.

If you are considering switching your disability insurance coverage from another carrier to the CTA-endorsed plan, be sure you understand any differences between the plans' terms, exclusions and benefits and how they could apply to your personal situation.

You are eligible to participate in the life insurance plan if you are one of the following:

• An active employee of an employer and a member in good standing of California Teachers Association (CTA); or
• A retired employee who:
  • Is a retired employee of an employer and a CTA-NEA Retired Lifetime member (CTA-R); and
  • Was insured under the CTA-endorsed plan immediately prior to retirement; and
  • Is eligible for monthly benefits under the State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) or Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) and authorizes premium deductions through those benefits.

The right amount of life insurance for you will vary based on your life circumstances. Your goal in obtaining this coverage should be to ensure that your family and loved ones will be able to continue without your income. To help you figure out just how much you need, try our Life Insurance Needs Calculator.

You can get coverage for your dependents if you are enrolled in the life insurance plan yourself.

For more details, see Life Insurance Coverage Details.

You may designate anyone as a beneficiary of your life insurance with our Beneficiary Designation/Change form. If you do not designate a beneficiary, benefits will be paid in the following order:

• Your spouse or domestic partner,
• Your children,
• Your parents,
• Your brothers or sisters, then
• Your estate

CTA members who are in good standing and are educators or education support professionals can use this online application to apply for coverage.

If you are currently enrolled in a decreasing Term Life plan or if you work in more than one district, please complete our paper application.

If you are currently enrolled and are a retiree or getting ready to retire, please complete our participant change form to submit any changes.

Student members and non-members are not eligible for voluntary benefits through The Standard.

Eligible members can use online application for the current voluntary Life and Disability insurance plans. If you are currently enrolled in a decreasing Term Life plan and would like to make a change, please fill out our paper enrollment form.

If an educator works in multiple districts, he/she can have Disability coverage in each of those school districts in which he/she works an average of 15 hours per week. For instance, if he/she works 15 hours in district A and 20 hours in district B, he/she may be insured under both districts. If he/she works only 10 hours in district B, he/she may be insured only in district A. If he/she works only 10 hours in each district, he/she is not eligible to be covered in either district.

If you are an educator and work for more than one school district, you'll need to fill out an enrollment form for each of the districts through which you are eligible for disability coverage. For instance, you'll need to fill out an enrollment form for each district with the hours and income specific to that district to be paid benefits for all hours of work if you become disabled and file a claim.

If you are an education support professional and work for more than one school district, fill out your application form assigning all of your hours from all of the districts you work for to the single district from which you would like to pay premiums.

A participant may have Life Insurance in only one school district.

Disability participants with a valid CTA user ID and password can log in via CTAMemberBenefits.org/TheStandard and submit a disability claim.

Please update your information when completing your claim — it will be updated in our system.

The more you can provide, the faster we can process your claim. Anything that is required will be marked with an asterisk (*).

To correctly process your claim we need to better understand your family situation, including others who may be dependent upon your income for support.

To ensure proper tax reporting, we collect your Social Security number in connection with your benefit payments.

We recommend that you file an anticipatory claim two weeks in advance of your leave.

Please call us at 800.522.0406. Because your claim has already been established, one of our customer service representatives can easily make those changes without your resubmitting a claim form.

We take our obligation to protect the personal information you provide in connection with insurance transactions very seriously. The Standard does not share our customers' personal information with unaffiliated third parties for the purposes unrelated to processing applications, issuing and servicing our policies or administering claims. You can read more in our corporate notices.

We ask only for information that is pertinent to your disability claim, including salary, start date, cease-work date, sick leave and general employment information.

We only ask for information that is pertinent to your disability claim, including medical information directly related to your claim.

Because the claim system requires that you log in to CTAMemberBenefits.org/TheStandard to access the claim form, most surviving family members won't have proper access. Instead, we provide a paper form that can be mailed or faxed to us. Additionally, a claim may be submitted by phone at 800.522.0406.