How much is your NSW car accident claim worth?

Why we don't put a dollar figure on this page

Some lawyer-advert pages will tell you a number. It's usually meaningless. NSW CTP compensation is built from individual line items that depend on your actual earnings, your actual medical bills, and how your specific injury sits against the legal classification.

What we can do, honestly, is show you the parts a claim is built from and what changes the size of each part. Anyone who promises you a number before they've seen the evidence is selling, not advising.

The two streams of a NSW CTP payout

1. Statutory benefits (paid as you go)

These are weekly payments and direct funding while you recover. They include:

• Weekly income payments. Based on your pre-crash earnings. Tapered after the first 14 weeks if you can do some work. Paid into your account fortnightly or weekly.
• Medical treatment. GP, physio, imaging, specialists, surgery, medication. Paid directly to providers — you don't front the money.
• Rehab. Physio, exercise physiology, OT, return-to-work programs.
• Psychological support. Sessions with a psychologist or psychiatrist where the injury includes a mental health impact.

How long these run depends on the injury classification:

• Threshold injury — up to 12 months.
• Non-threshold injury, not at fault — up to 3 years (longer for catastrophic).
• At fault, any injury — up to 52 weeks regardless of fault.

2. Damages (a lump sum at the end)

Only for non-threshold injuries where someone else was at fault (or where fault was shared, with proportional reduction). Damages cover:

• Past economic loss. Wages you lost from the crash through to settlement.
• Future economic loss. Wages you'll lose going forward because of the injury — including reduced earning capacity if you can't do your old job.
• Past care. Help you needed from family or paid carers since the crash.
• Future care. Help you'll need going forward.
• Non-economic loss. A regulated amount for pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life. Capped under NSW law.

What changes the size of each part

• Your pre-crash earnings. The single biggest variable for income loss. Average weekly earnings, recent payslips, tax returns, BAS for the self-employed.
• Injury severity. Threshold vs non-threshold. Then within non-threshold, how severe.
• Length of recovery. A six-week recovery looks very different to an 18-month one.
• Permanent impairment. Assessed at a percentage. Different percentages unlock different parts of the damages claim.
• Fault. Wholly someone else's fault is the cleanest. Shared fault reduces damages proportionally. Wholly your fault means no damages but up to 52 weeks of statutory benefits.
• Age and work history. Future economic loss runs longer for younger people with more working years ahead.

The honest ranges (without pretending to know your number)

We won't fake a calculator. But here's the rough shape:

A threshold soft-tissue claimtypically runs as 12 months of medical and weekly income support. The total cash value depends almost entirely on what you were earning. There's no damages component.

A non-threshold claim with a clear recovery can run statutory benefits for 18–24 months plus a damages settlement. The damages settlement size is heavily driven by earnings and impairment percentage.

A serious non-threshold claim with permanent impairmentcan settle for amounts that materially change the household finances — but only when properly evidenced. Many of these claims get under-settled when they aren't.

Catastrophic injury claims (spinal cord, severe head injury, amputation) run on a different lifetime-care track and need specialist handling.

What we do for you

One phone call. We take the details, run through where you'd realistically sit in each of those categories, and tell you what evidence we'd need to maximise the parts that apply. No fee for that conversation. No fee structure that takes a contingency cut from your damages either — legal costs on damages claims under NSW MAIA 2017 are regulated and typically paid by the insurer.

We work this out for people right across the state — from Parramatta and the Western Sydney suburbs through to Liverpool, the Sydney CBD and the regional centres. Wherever you are, the parts of the payout work the same way; the conversation is the same.

Take the short check at /check, or call (02) 7238 7379 and a real person picks up.