What can you be compensated for?

If your treatment or medication has given you permanent disabilities that do not go away, you can get a compensation. How much you get in compensation depends on how serious your disabilities are.

A permanent injury can be both physical and mental.

The compensation for a permanent injury is at a fixed amount per degree of disability. The amount is determined by the Ministry of Justice.

The compensation is reduced in tact with age. This means that younger people get more in compensation than older people because they often have to live with the permanent injury for more years.

You can get a compensation if you have been prevented from working due to your injury and therefore have had a loss of income. The compensation is called lost earnings.

The compensation is calculated according to your previous income and is therefore individual. People with a high income will receive a higher compensation than people with a lower income.

If your injury prevents you from working in the future, as you did prior to the injury, you can receive a compensation for the loss of earning capacity.

The compensation is calculated on the basis of your annual salary at the time of the injury and on the basis of how much you are able to work after your injury.

To calculate the compensation, multiply your annual salary by 10 and thereafter multiply by the percentage of ability to work you have lost. We find the percentage by comparing your expected future income with and without the injury.

No compensation is granted if the loss of earning capacity is less than 15%.

For children under the age of 15, the compensation is determined by the severity of the injury multiplied by 10 and then multiplied by a normal regular salary.

You can get a compensation for expenses you have incurred in relation to the injury.

This can for example be expenses for medicine, rehabilitation, transport, specially sewn footwear, etc.

If a citizen unfortunately passes away from his injury, the surviving spouse or cohabitant can receive a compensation.

The law does not provide compensation for the grief that is when one loses a family member, but solely for the expenses associated with the passing.

In the event of death, relatives can receive a compensation for loss of dependency. Loss of dependency is the money that the deceased spent on providing for his or her spouse or cohabitant. 

Loss of dependents amounts to 30% of the deceased's annual salary multiplied by 10.

The compensation is reduced in tact with age. This means that the older the deceased was, the less compensation the spouse or cohabitant receives.

The deceased's spouse or cihabitant also receives a transitional amount of DKK 191,000 (2024 level) to cover the expenses associated with the death, eg. for a funeral.