You may be entitled to benefits from the National Insurance Institute.
It will not tell you that.

In a large share of claims against the National Insurance Institute, legal fees are capped by law - among them general disability, work accidents, special services, mobility allowance and disabled child benefit. The law sets a ceiling on the file-opening fee (up to ILS 961, as of 1 January 2026) and a maximum percentage of the benefit, which varies by claim type. For claims outside that statutory list - a long-term care benefit, for example - the fee is set by agreement, and you hear it up front in the first conversation. Either way, you will not discover a figure after the fact.

Before, for two reasons. The first is professional: the medical file is built once, and repairing it later is far harder than filing correctly from the start. The second is financial, and less well known: in general disability claims the benefit is paid retroactively for no more than 12 months from the date the claim is filed. So if your entitlement already goes back more than a year, every month that passes without a claim is a month you will never recover. If you are unsure whether you have grounds at all - that is precisely the conversation there is no charge for.

It depends on the type of claim, and the difference matters. Against a medical committee decision on general disability - 60 days from receiving the written notice. On work-injury disability - 30 days, though the grounds of objection may be completed within 60 days. A decision of the appeals committee can be appealed to the regional labour court within 60 days, but on points of law only - not on the medical finding itself. These are fixed deadlines. If a decision has arrived, do not wait "until things are clearer".

"Disability" in the language of the National Insurance Institute is not necessarily what the word suggests. The question is not whether you have a dramatic diagnosis, but how much the condition impairs your ability to function and to earn - and those two are assessed separately: there is a medical disability rating, and there is a loss-of-earning-capacity rating. Autoimmune conditions, fibromyalgia, mental health conditions, ongoing orthopaedic and neurological conditions - all of them can establish entitlement, with no single dramatic event and no "accident". What decides it is how the condition is documented and presented, not what it is called.

You start with the right route, and that is already half the work. For a child the route is usually the disabled child benefit - not general disability, which is an entirely different track. Alongside it there may be further entitlements: mobility allowance, special services and associated benefits, each with its own conditions. Many parents come to us years later and discover they were entitled far earlier, and retroactive payment is capped. In the first conversation we map which benefit is relevant to your child and what is needed to establish it.

The committee itself is short - usually a matter of tens of minutes, sometimes less. It is made up of a physician or physicians from the relevant field, alongside the committee secretary. You are asked about your complaints, your day-to-day functioning and your work, and a physical examination is sometimes carried out. The decision is not given on the spot - it is sent in writing, and the objection deadline starts running from the date you receive it. Precisely because that window is short and decisive, we sit with you beforehand, go through what will be asked and how to answer, and attend with you.

Not always, and we will not send you to an expense that will not change the outcome. A private opinion is justified when it adds what the existing file does not say - for example when the medical records describe the illness but not the extent of the functional impairment, when there is a genuine professional disagreement, or when a causal link between the work and the condition has to be established. Where the medical file already speaks for itself, it is unnecessary. We tell you this up front, before you have spent a shekel.

There is no single number, and anyone who quotes one is guessing. The first stage, from filing to the medical committee, is generally measured in months and varies by branch and by claim type. An objection adds a further stage, and an appeal to the labour court adds another. There is also one rule worth knowing in advance: in general disability the benefit is paid from the 91st day after the loss-of-earning-capacity rating is determined - and where a 100% rating is set for a period of at least six months, from the 31st day. In the first conversation we tell you the reasonable range for your case, and what affects it.