Michigan Attendant Care and Replacement Services Attorney

You are the one getting up at two in the morning, handling the medications, the transfers, the bathing, the overnight checks. Maybe you cut your hours, or left a job, to do it. A rehabilitation facility would bill for every one of those tasks.

Michigan no-fault is supposed to pay for that care, and it can pay you. Auto accident attorneys at Vahdat Weisman Law handle attendant care claims and disputes across Michigan. Call (734) 469-4994 for a free consultation. No attorney fee unless we recover for you.

Two Benefits, and They Are Not the Same Thing

Attendant care is care for the person who was hurt: help with bathing, dressing, toileting, transfers, medication management, wound care, and supervision for someone with a brain injury who cannot safely be left alone. It falls under allowable expenses, which cover “reasonable charges incurred for reasonably necessary products, services and accommodations” for an injured person’s care, recovery, or rehabilitation (MCL 500.3107(1)(a)). There is no daily dollar cap and no three-year limit, though what an insurer must pay is subject to the coverage level selected (MCL 500.3107c) and, for applicable claims, to the reimbursement limits in MCL 500.3157.

Replacement services are the household tasks your relative would have done alone: cooking, laundry, cleaning, yard work, shoveling, driving the kids. Those are capped at “expenses not exceeding $20.00 per day, reasonably incurred in obtaining ordinary and necessary services,” and only during the first three years after the accident (MCL 500.3107(1)(c)).

The line is between services “related to” the injuries and “ordinary household tasks” (Douglas v. Allstate Insurance Co. 492 Mich 241 (2012)). Which side your hours fall on decides whether the $20 cap applies.

Can You Be Paid for the Care You Give?

Often, yes. Michigan law does not require the care to come from a licensed agency, and a spouse, parent, or adult child providing attendant care can be paid for it (Van Marter v American Fidelity Fire Insurance Co, 114 Mich App 171 (1982)).

Douglas set out what has to be true. The expense must be for the injured person’s care, recovery, or rehabilitation; it must be reasonably necessary; it must be incurred; and the charge must be reasonable. The Court also held that you need no license, but that you must have expected to be paid at the time.

Whether the care was reasonably necessary, and at what level, comes from the medical proof. A treating physician’s prescription stating the hours and level of care is the cleanest form of it, though Douglas imposed no categorical prescription requirement.

Whether you expected to be paid at the time is a separate question, and a prescription does not answer it. That is shown by your own record kept at the time: a dated log of the hours and tasks performed, written as you go rather than reconstructed later. If you are not keeping one, start today.

What Your Hours Are Worth

Two cases frame the rate; a statute caps it. The current version of MCL 500.3157 imposes statutory reimbursement limits on what an insurer must pay, and those limits apply regardless of what the rate evidence shows.

An agency’s commercial rate “supplies one measure of the value of attendant care and is worthy of a jury’s consideration,” and a reasonable charge is judged objectively as fair, proper, or moderate under the circumstances (Hardrick v Auto Club Insurance Association (Mich Ct App, Dec. 1, 2011)). Agency overhead and profit are to be weighed rather than automatically included.

Douglas, decided later by the Supreme Court, addressed a $40 per hour award where the record showed the agency actually paid its aide $10 per hour, and found that award clearly erroneous. The Court directed the fact-finder toward what health care agencies pay their employees rather than toward an agency’s retail charge to patients. It announced no single wage-comparison formula and did not remove agency rate evidence from consideration. Where the two decisions differ in emphasis, Douglas is the later and controlling authority.

In short: what an agency pays its aide, not what it bills the patient.

The 56-Hour Weekly Limit, and What It Does Not Mean

If you care for a relative at home, there is a weekly ceiling on the hours an insurer must pay. MCL 500.3157(10) limits what an insurer is required to pay for attendant care provided in the injured person’s home by a relative, a household member, or someone who had a business or social relationship with the injured person before the injury. It does so by cross-referencing the hourly limitation in the workers’ compensation statute, MCL 418.315, which provides that attendant or nursing care “shall not be ordered in excess of 56 hours per week” when provided by a spouse, sibling, child, or parent.

MCL 500.3157(10) borrows the 56-hour figure, not MCL 418.315’s list of caregivers, and applies it to any relative, any household member, and any person with a pre-injury business or social relationship, a broader group than the spouse, sibling, child, or parent named in the workers’ compensation provision.

56 hours is a weekly limit, not a daily one. You can spread those hours across the week however the need requires. If your relative needs supervision around the clock, a substantial part of that need falls outside what the insurer must pay you at the family rate.

Three qualifications matter.

It limits the insurer’s payment obligation, not the care. MCL 500.3157(11) expressly permits an insurer to contract to pay for more than the hourly limitation, and the Department of Insurance and Financial Services has cautioned against calling it an absolute cap.

It applies to care rendered after July 1, 2021. DIFS identified that date in its guidance to insurers.

It does not apply to everyone. The 2019 amendments do not apply to people injured before June 11, 2019, because “the 2019 no-fault amendments did not retroactively modify their vested contractual rights” (Andary v USAA Casualty Insurance Co, 512 Mich 207 (2023)). The Court expressly limited its holding to MCL 500.3157(7) and (10), the provision for services Medicare does not cover and the family-care hourly limitation.

That holding has since been extended. A published 2025 Court of Appeals decision applied Andary’s reasoning to the remainder of the amended MCL 500.3157 fee schedule for people injured before June 11, 2019 (Fremont Insurance Co v Lighthouse Outpatient Center), and DIFS subsequently stated that no part of the amended fee schedule applies to that group. So if your relative was hurt before that date, the exemption is broader than Andary alone described. [ATTORNEY REVIEW: confirm the Fremont docket number, reporter citation, and the date and form of the DIFS statement before publication.]

How Far Back Can You Be Paid?

This decides how much of the care you already gave can still be paid for. MCL 500.3145 has several parts.

Subsection (1): notice of injury and commencement. An action for personal protection insurance benefits generally may not be commenced later than one year after the accident, unless written notice of injury went to the insurer within that year or the insurer already paid benefits for the injury. This is the part of the statute that requires a writing.

Subsection (2): the one-year-back limitation. Subject to subsection (3), you “may not recover benefits for any portion of the loss incurred more than 1 year before the date on which the action was commenced.”

Subsection (3): tolling. Subsection (2) opens with “Subject to subsection (3).” Subsection (3) tolls both the period for commencing an action and the period for recovering benefits, running from the date of a specific claim for payment until the date the insurer formally denies the claim. So care given more than a year before suit is not automatically lost. Tolling does not apply if you fail to pursue the claim with reasonable diligence.

The statute says “specific claim for payment.” It does not say the claim must be in writing. Putting it in writing, with the dates and hours of care, is sound practice rather than a statutory requirement.

One limit matters for older care. MCL 500.3145(3) does not apply retroactively to causes of action that accrued before June 11, 2019, and for personal protection insurance medical benefits a claim accrues when the service is rendered (Spine Specialists of Michigan, PC v MemberSelect Insurance Co, Docket No. 165445 (Mich, April 1, 2025)).

Two more rules bear on delay. Benefits are overdue if not paid within 30 days after the insurer receives reasonable proof of the fact and amount of the loss, with 12 percent simple interest per year on overdue payments (MCL 500.3142). Where a court finds the insurer unreasonably refused to pay or unreasonably delayed proper payment, your attorney is entitled to a reasonable fee (MCL 500.3148(1)).

If There Is No Policy to Claim Against

Where no policy applies, and benefits come through the Michigan Assigned Claims Plan, personal protection insurance benefits are limited to $250,000. Whether the fee schedule and the 56-hour limitation also apply depends on the accident date and on the Andary and Fremont analysis above.

Why Choose Vahdat Weisman Law?

Attendant care disputes turn on documentation and on the timing provisions in MCL 500.3145: the physician’s record of what care is reasonably necessary and at what level, your log of hours and tasks, rate evidence for that level of care, and a record of when a specific claim for payment was made and when the insurer responded. Where a claim has been delayed, the tolling analysis under subsection (3) comes first, because it decides how much of the past care can still be recovered.

From our Livonia office, we represent injured people and their families throughout Michigan. Founding partners Kara E. Weisman and Jordan S. Vahdat have each been honored as Super Lawyers Rising Stars. Our attorneys are members of the State Bar of Michigan and active in the Michigan Association for Justice. We advance case costs, we work in English and Spanish, and we are available 24/7.

Frequently Asked Questions

• I have been caring for my husband for two years, and nobody has paid me. Is it too late? Possibly not, and not only for the most recent year. MCL 500.3145(2) limits recovery to the loss incurred in the year before an action is commenced, but it is expressly subject to subsection (3), which tolls both the commencement period and the recovery period from the date of a specific claim for payment until the insurer formally denies it, provided the claim is pursued with reasonable diligence. Subsection (1)’s separate one-year notice rule has to be checked too. The insurer may also argue you did not expect compensation at the time, a question answered by records kept as you went.
• Does the 56-hour limit apply to me? It depends on when the injury happened, when you gave the care, and your relationship to the person. The limit applies to care given in the home after July 1, 2021, and under Andary, the 2019 amendments do not apply to people injured before June 11, 2019.
• What should I be paid per hour? Michigan courts look to what home care agencies pay their own employees for comparable work rather than to what they bill patients, and the level of care matters: skilled care and overnight supervision are valued differently than companionship. For claims subject to the amended MCL 500.3157, the statutory reimbursement limits apply on top of that analysis.
• Can I be paid for attendant care and replacement services at the same time? Both can be in play, but you cannot count the same hour twice. Household tasks fall under the $20 per day, three-year replacement services provision; care directed at the injured person’s condition is attendant care.
• They sent my husband to their own doctor and then stopped paying. What now? That sequence has its own rules, including qualification requirements for the examining physician under MCL 500.3151 and a right to obtain the examination reports under MCL 500.3152. Our insurance medical exams and benefit cutoffs page explains them.

About the Author

Jordan S. Vahdat is a founding partner of Vahdat Weisman Law in Livonia and handles negligence, premises liability, auto accident, and insurance dispute cases. He has been admitted to all Michigan state courts since 2014, practices in the Eastern District of Michigan, and has served as a case evaluator for the Washtenaw Circuit Trial Court and the 15th District Court since 2020. He is fluent in Spanish.

Talk to a Michigan Attendant Care Lawyer

If you are caring for someone at home after a serious crash, call Vahdat Weisman Law at (734) 469-4994 or contact us online for a free consultation. Available 24/7, serving all of Michigan, with Spanish-speaking staff. Our no-fault PIP benefits disputes and catastrophic injuries pages cover related ground.

Dedicated to Justice. Devoted to You. Winning for Your Future.

Reviewed by Jordan S. Vahdat, Vahdat Weisman Law. Last reviewed September 2026.

This information is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every case is unique, and prior results do not guarantee future success.