How long do you have to make a compensation claim?

What sets the time limit on your claim

Two things decide how long you have, and neither of them is a single national rule.

The first is the type of claim. A workers’ compensation claim, a motor accident claim, a public liability claim and a dust disease claim each run on different clocks, and one person can have more than one claim running on more than one clock at the same time.

The second is the state or territory where it happened. That is set by where the accident or the exposure occurred, not by where you live now, and for people who worked across several states it is sometimes a genuine choice rather than a fixed fact.

Most claims then carry more than one deadline. There is usually a scheme deadline first, measured in months. A pre-court process sits in the middle. The court limitation period, the famous three years, comes last.

Key Point

The three year figure is real, but it is the final deadline in the sequence rather than the first. Being inside it is not the same as being in time to run the claim properly.

Court time limits in each state and territory

For a negligence claim brought in court, every Australian state and territory uses a three year period. That part is settled, and it is why the figure is quoted so widely.

What differs between them, and what decides real claims, is the date that three years runs from, and whether an outer limit applies regardless of when you found out.

Two things follow from that table, and they pull in opposite directions.

In New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia, a long gap between what happened and when you understood it does not necessarily cost you the claim, because the period starts when you knew. That matters enormously for conditions that build slowly.

In Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory the starting point is less forgiving. The question there becomes whether the period can be extended rather than whether it has started, and each of those jurisdictions has its own extension power.

Expert Tip

If you worked in more than one state, do not assume the rules of the state you live in now apply. Mining, construction, transport and defence work regularly crosses borders, and because the periods, the starting points and the schemes all differ, which jurisdiction a claim belongs to is worth settling early rather than late.

The deadline that comes before the court deadline

Almost every compensation claim in Australia runs through a scheme before it reaches a court, and schemes set their own deadlines.

Workers’ compensation is the clearest example. Each state and territory has its own insurer or scheme, WorkCover Queensland, icare in New South Wales, WorkSafe Victoria, WorkCover WA, ReturnToWorkSA, WorkSafe Tasmania, WorkSafe ACT and NT WorkSafe among them, and each sets its own period for lodging a statutory claim. Those periods are measured in months rather than years, and they are not the same across the country.

Motor accident claims follow the same pattern. Every state and territory requires notice to the relevant insurer or authority well before any court deadline, and in several of them the notice period is tied to when you first speak to a lawyer, not only to the date of the accident.

Public liability and medical negligence claims in most jurisdictions also require a formal notice and a pre-court process to be completed before proceedings can start. Because that process itself takes months, a claim left close to the three year mark can be inside the limitation period and still impossible to prepare properly.

The shape is consistent across Australia even though the numbers are not: an early scheme deadline, a pre-court process in the middle, and the court limitation period at the end.

Expert Tip

If you are not sure which scheme deadline applies to you, give notice or lodge while you find out. It preserves the claim and commits you to nothing, and withdrawing later is straightforward. Reviving a claim after a scheme deadline has closed is a much harder conversation.

Queensland deadlines as a worked example

Setting out one jurisdiction in full shows how the layers stack up in practice. The figures below are Queensland’s, and they should not be carried across a border.

The row that catches people is the notice deadline on motor vehicle and public liability claims, because it is the earlier of two dates and the second one is the trap. Consult a lawyer two months after a car accident and the notice is due a month after that, not seven months later. Seeing a lawyer early shortens that deadline rather than extending it, which is the opposite of what most people expect.

The six month WorkCover deadline catches a different group: the people who kept working. You strain your back, you manage it, you do not want to make a fuss, and eight months later you cannot lift anything. The entitlement date was months ago.

Key Point

Other states layer their deadlines the same way with different numbers. If your claim belongs elsewhere, use this table to understand the shape of the problem, then get the figures for your own jurisdiction before relying on any date.

When the time limit starts running

For a broken ankle in a car accident the date is obvious. For many claims it is not.

Three dates compete, and people pick the wrong one.

The date it happened is the one most people assume, and for a single obvious accident that is usually right.

The date you first had symptoms is different, and for something that built up over months of repetitive work it may be the only date that makes sense.

The date you understood what you had and what caused it is the one that matters most in the states that use a knowledge test. Someone told for years that their breathlessness was age, who is then diagnosed with an asbestos-related condition, has a knowledge date decades after the exposure.

This is why a diagnosis letter is often the most useful document to bring to a first conversation. It fixes a date.

Expert Tip

Do not work out your own knowledge date and then decide you are out of time. It is a legal test, not a common-sense one, and “I suppose I always wondered whether work caused it” is not the same thing as knowing.

Dust disease claims can have multiple limitation periods, and sometimes none at all

Dust conditions do not fit the ordinary rules anywhere in Australia, because the law has accepted that the exposure and the illness are separated by decades.

A forty year old exposure is usually still claimable, and the firm regularly speaks with people who had assumed for years that it was far too late.

The position in each state, including which allow provisional damages, is on the dust disease page, with more on each condition at asbestos and mesothelioma, asbestos lung cancer, silica disease and coal dust and black lung.

Key Point

No legal deadline is not the same as no reason to move. Dust claims turn on evidence of where you worked and what you were exposed to, and that evidence lives with co-workers, employers and records that do not last forever. The limitation period is not what you are racing.

Child abuse claims have no time limit

Following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, every state and territory removed the limitation period for claims arising from child abuse.

The change applies retrospectively. Claims that were out of time under the old rules can now be brought, and in several states a settlement signed or a claim struck out under the previous law can be set aside so the claim can be run properly.

Courts keep a power to stop a claim where a fair trial is genuinely no longer possible, usually where key people have died or records are gone. That is a different question from a deadline, and it is assessed case by case rather than by a date.

More on how these claims run is on the institutional abuse page.

Expert Tip

If you were told years ago that you were out of time, that advice may simply no longer be correct. The law changed. It is worth asking again.

Children and people under a legal incapacity

The rules work differently where the person with the claim could not reasonably have brought it themselves.

Across Australia the period for a child generally does not begin until their eighteenth birthday, which in a three year jurisdiction leaves them until they turn twenty one. Where someone is under a legal incapacity, the period generally does not start until that incapacity ends.

Neither rule removes the scheme and notice requirements, and a parent or guardian can start a claim on a child’s behalf long before any of this matters. Waiting until a child turns eighteen because the deadline allows it is usually the wrong call, because the evidence ages in the meantime.

Key Point

A claim run for a child is not a smaller version of an adult claim. The long-term effect on earning capacity is the largest part of it, and that is assessed on evidence about someone whose working life has not started.

If the time limit has already passed

This is the question most worth asking, and the one people avoid because they expect the answer to be no.

It often is not.

Scheme deadlines are commonly waived. A late workers’ compensation claim is still accepted in many cases where there is a reasonable explanation for the delay, and “I thought I would be right in a few weeks” is an explanation schemes hear constantly.

Court limitation periods can be extended in most jurisdictions, though the test is narrower. The usual route is that a material fact of a decisive character came to your knowledge recently, which covers the common situation of a specialist finally explaining that a condition is permanent, or that work caused it.

Notice periods can often be met late with a reasonable excuse, and a claim is not automatically lost because a notice was out of time.

Some claims never had a deadline to miss at all.

What does not help is waiting longer to find out. Every extension route turns on explaining a delay, and the explanation gets harder the longer the delay runs.

Expert Tip

If you think you are out of time, say so in the first conversation rather than leaving it out. It changes what has to be done first, and it is far better dealt with at the start than discovered halfway through.

Getting a straight answer on your own deadline

The dates on this page are a general guide across Australia. Limitation periods are technical, they differ between states, they change, and the one that applies to you depends on the facts of your claim, so take advice on your own situation before relying on any figure here.

You do not need to work out which rule applies before you call. Bring the dates you have: when it happened, when you first saw someone about it, when you were told what it was. Bring the diagnosis letter if there is one. If you worked in more than one state, bring what you remember about where and when.

The answer will be one of three things. There is time, and this is the deadline that matters. There is a deadline that has passed, and this is whether it can be extended. Or there was never a deadline on this type of claim in the first place.

Every claim is run on a no win, no fee* basis, and the firm does not use litigation funders. Legal costs can often be claimed in addition to compensation recovered, and interest is only charged on legal costs that remain unpaid. Disbursements are a separate cost and are explained in writing before anything is agreed.

If you are unsure where you stand, you can request a free case review or call 1300 848 424. The conversation is confidential and commits you to nothing.