How long the plan has to decide your appeal
45 days from each request for review, extendable once by up to 45 more. A plan with two appeal levels runs a separate clock for each.
For a disability appeal, the timing rule is stricter than the general ERISA appeal rule for other benefit types. The general rule allows the plan 60 days to decide an appeal, extendable once by up to 60 more days for special circumstances such as needing to hold a hearing. The regulation then substitutes 45 days in place of 60 for disability claims, both for the initial period and the extension.
That gives a maximum of 45 plus 45, or 90 days, for the plan to decide one appeal, and the extra 45 days are available only if the plan gives you written notice of the extension, describing the special circumstances, before the initial 45-day period ends.
The period runs from the plan's receipt of "the claimant's request for review." That wording is what decides the question below: the clock is tied to a request for review, so it starts again each time you file one.
One appeal or two: each appeal gets its own 45 days
Some plans provide only one level of internal appeal. Others require a second internal appeal before the plan's process is finished, and some offer a second level that is voluntary. Where a plan has two levels, the 45 days, plus any 45-day extension, applies to each appeal separately. It is not one shared allowance spread across the appeal stage as a whole.
Two features of the regulation settle this. First, disability appeals are governed by the general timing rule "whether the plan provides for one or two appeals," and that general rule measures its period from the plan's receipt of a request for review, so each request opens a period of its own. Second, the group health rule shows what the drafters wrote when they did want one period divided between two appeal levels: for a group health post-service claim the regulation allocates its period "with respect to any one of such two appeals." No such allocation appears in the disability paragraph.
What not to conclude from this: if your plan has two appeal levels, do not add up 90 days from your first appeal and decide the plan has run out of time. It has not. Acting on that belief, by treating the claim as deemed exhausted and going to court, is the mistake described in one appeal or two, and a lawsuit filed before every appeal your plan requires is finished can be dismissed for failure to exhaust.
If the plan misses this deadline
A plan that fails to decide the appeal in front of it within its own 45 days, or within 90 where it gave you a proper extension notice, has failed to follow the claims procedure the regulation requires. For a disability claim that failure can trigger deemed exhaustion: see what is deemed exhaustion and its stricter disability-specific version. Deemed exhaustion is a narrow rule that turns on the plan's failures and on nothing you did, and it is not a step to take on your own reading of the calendar. Where a plan has two appeal levels, check which appeal the clock you are counting actually belongs to before concluding anything.
Sources
29 CFR 2560.503-1(i)(1)(i) and (i)(3)(i), with the group health contrast at (i)(2)(iii)(A). Checked 2026-09-16.