Online tools usually work from averages. But spinal cord injuries don’t behave like a “typical” scenario—two people with similar diagnoses can have very different outcomes based on imaging results, neurological findings, and whether complications develop.
In Tavares cases, insurers often focus on whether the medical documentation clearly supports:
- Causation (that the incident caused or worsened the spinal injury)
- Severity (how much neurological function was affected)
- Consistency (whether treatment aligns with what was reported at the time)
A calculator may not capture those evidence-based issues. That’s why it’s best to treat an estimate as a budgeting question—not a prediction of what you’ll recover.


