When you suffer an injury that requires involved medical treatment, the bills can quickly add up. It might seem like you have few options for affording treatment, but there are cases when workers’ compensation applies even if your injury occurs outside of work.

Receiving workers’ compensation requires that your injury occurs during the course of your job or that your job is a contributing cause to the injury. You can determine if workers’ compensation benefits apply to your injury by learning more about the laws surrounding contributing causes.

According to the California Code of Regulations , an employer must consider an injury or illness to be work-related if workplace factors cause the condition or if they aggravate a pre-existing condition. The latter is often the case in labor-intensive jobs where repetitive strain can build up until an injury occurs. Common contributing causes in these fields of work include lifting, operating heavy machinery and constant pushing or pulling motions.

While you might hope that your employer or the insurer backing your employment benefits would honor your workers’ compensation claim immediately, it might be the case that you need to provide evidence of work-relatedness first. One option is to receive a statement from your doctor that outlines which tasks might contribute to the injury. If you can provide documentation of the amount of time you spend performing those tasks at work, that can strengthen your claim even further.

Even if activities in your personal life also contribute to the onset of an injury, that does not change the fact that you deserve compensation if your work is also related. If your employer wrongfully denies your workers’ compensation claim, it may be necessary to pursue legal action.