You got the first check. You think you’re covered. Then month 37 hits and the checks stop — and your lawyer never warned you this day was coming.

If you were hurt in a Michigan car crash and you’ve been collecting wage loss through your own auto insurance, there is a cliff waiting for you at day 1,096. Most injured workers don’t see it until they fall off it. This post is the napkin-math version of what your attorney should have drawn for you in month one.

The 85% rule isn’t really 85%

Michigan’s No-Fault Act, MCL 500.3107(1)(b), says your PIP carrier has to pay “work loss consisting of loss of income from work an injured person would have performed… if he or she had not been injured.” The number you’ve heard — and the number on every insurance adjuster’s script — is 85%.

Here is what that 85% actually means in practice.

The statute pays 85% of your gross lost wages, not net. That sounds generous, until you remember that wage loss benefits in Michigan are tax-free. So the state legislature scaled 85% of gross to roughly approximate what you would have taken home after taxes anyway. For most working people, that math lands closer to your normal paycheck than you’d expect — but only if your gross wages fit under the monthly cap.

They usually don’t.

The monthly cap nobody mentions at signup

Here’s the part the 85% headline hides. MCL 500.3107(1)(b) caps wage loss at a statewide maximum that the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) adjusts every October 1. For the benefit year running October 2024 through September 2025, that cap is approximately $6,811 per month. It moves each year with the state’s average weekly wage index.

Let’s do the real numbers.

Say you were grossing $95,000 a year — about $7,917 per month. Eighty-five percent of that is $6,729. You’re under the cap. Good. You get roughly $6,729 a month, and it feels close to whole.

Now say you were grossing $120,000. Eighty-five percent of your monthly gross is $8,500. But the cap slams you down to $6,811. You just lost $1,689 every month to the ceiling — and because these benefits are tax-free, that delta is real money out of your household.

Run it over 36 months. That’s more than $60,000 in wage loss the statute quietly kept from you, and your insurer is never going to write you an apology letter about it.

If you’re a tradesperson clearing six figures with overtime, a nurse stacking shifts, a truck driver on a per-mile rate, or any Michigan worker whose gross monthly pay exceeds roughly $8,013 — the cap is eating your claim. Every month. Quietly.

Day 1,096: the three-year cliff

Now the part that blindsides people.

MCL 500.3107(1)(b) also limits wage loss to a maximum of three years from the date of the accident. Not from the date you stopped working. Not from the date benefits started. From the crash itself.

Three years. 1,096 days. Then the PIP wage loss checks stop. Permanently. Forever. Regardless of whether you’re still disabled. Regardless of whether your doctor still has you off work. Regardless of whether your injuries got worse in year two.

If your crash was on April 13, 2023, your wage loss benefits end on April 13, 2026. Month 37 is the wall.

This is not a loophole or an edge case. It is written into the statute, and Michigan courts have enforced it without mercy for decades. A good attorney tells you about it on day one. A bad attorney lets you discover it on day 1,097.

1099 and gig workers: prove it or lose it

If you’re W-2, your wage loss case is mostly a pay stub exercise. If you’re 1099, gig, rideshare, contract, or self-employed, you are walking into the hardest wage loss fight in the statute.

PIP carriers will demand:

Then they will argue that your income was declining anyway, that the work wasn’t guaranteed, that your expenses weren’t what you claim, and that your “real” wage loss is a fraction of what you’re asking for. If your attorney is not building this evidentiary record from month one — pulling 36 months of banking, reconstructing your book of business, lining up client affidavits — you are going to lose tens of thousands on proof problems alone.

Bridging year four and beyond

So what happens after day 1,096 if you still can’t work?

There is no magic fourth-year PIP check in Michigan. The statute is the statute. But there are two real bridges, and both of them require your lawyer to have been building the file from the beginning.

The first bridge is a third-party bodily injury claim against the at-fault driver. Michigan’s threshold rules for serious impairment of body function, under MCL 500.3135, allow you to recover excess economic loss — meaning wages above the monthly cap and beyond the three-year window — from the at-fault driver’s liability coverage. This is where the $1,689-per-month you lost to the cap can be recovered, plus your year 4, 5, and 6 wage loss. But only if the case is preserved, the threshold is met, and the statute of limitations hasn’t run.

The second bridge is Social Security Disability Insurance. SSDI has its own medical standard, its own five-month waiting period, and its own application nightmare — but for a worker permanently sidelined by a crash, it’s often the only long-term income floor left after PIP expires.

A second-opinion attorney should be mapping both bridges in month six, not month thirty-seven.

The quiet check isn’t a good sign

Here’s the uncomfortable truth. If your PIP wage loss checks have been arriving on time and your lawyer hasn’t called you about the cap, the three-year cliff, the third-party case, or SSDI — your file is not being worked. It is being watched.

There is a difference between a lawyer who cashes the fee and a lawyer who builds the runway. The first one lets month 37 happen to you. The second one has been preparing for it since month one.

If you’re somewhere between month six and month thirty of a Michigan wage loss claim, and nobody has drawn this map for you, get a second set of eyes on the file. Before the cliff, not after.

Fire My Lawyer is a Michigan second-opinion service for injured workers who suspect their wage loss claim isn’t being fully worked. We don’t litigate your case — we review it, tell you what you’ve got, and if it’s time to move, we match you to a vetted Michigan PI attorney. One call. 1-855-FML-2DAY (1-855-365-2329).