Denied insurance claim

[JeneralMom]

I don't want to go into too many details as this is an open forum, but has anyone ever had a claim denied by homeowner's insurance (pipe rusted out under house, washed away soil and now house is sinking into a sink hole) and successfully fought it?

[Dobela]

Start by seeing if your state has an Insurance Commissioner or similar at the gov't level. They help write the laws and license the companies in your state. They can get involved and let you know if you or the insurance company should pay the claim.

 

That being said, in our state that would be damage due to a lack of maintainence by the homeowner and insurance usually doesn't cover claims caused by homeowner negligence. You would really have to completely read your policy to see what is covered. If you could prove you had been maintaining the pipe or already replaced the pipe, and failure was due to bad workmanship of someone else, then you might have a claim.

[JeneralMom]

Start by seeing if your state has an Insurance Commissioner or similar at the gov't level. They help write the laws and license the companies in your state. They can get involved and let you know if you or the insurance company should pay the claim.

 

That being said, in our state that would be damage due to a lack of maintainence by the homeowner and insurance usually doesn't cover claims caused by homeowner negligence. You would really have to completely read your policy to see what is covered. If you could prove you had been maintaining the pipe or already replaced the pipe, and failure was due to bad workmanship of someone else, then you might have a claim.

 

 

There was no way to know the pipe was rusting - it runs under the foundation and the first indication we had that anything was wrong was wrong was when the middle of the house started sinking.

 

I will check out the insurance commissioner.

[hsbaby]

Sadly, they don't seem to care if you were able to know about the problem or not. We had an issue with our house after we moved in. Apparently there was water getting into the walls. We had no way of knowing this as our inspector gaves us the thumbs up and there were no external signs of damage. That is, until one night during a storm when water came POURING in. The insurance company offered to fix the damage, but not the problem. Inspector denied responsibilty as water damage was not externally visible. It was a nightmare which resulted in rebuilding a wall, replacing the floor, replacing the upstairs french doors in our master (leads to a patio which is apparently where the water was coming from. Long story short, they wouldn't budge. Our pleas that we had no idea water was coming in (how would we have known when even the inspector didn't catch it?), fell on deaf ears. I truly hope you have better luck than we did! We never followed up with any "higher ups", but if I had it to over again, I would.