Did you know that homeowner’s insurance and the auto insurance coverage that you have on your car will sometimes intersect? This can occur if you have an attached garage on your home. If you have your car parked in this type of garage and structural damage occurs to the garage, the contents inside may become damaged as well.
Garage Damages And Reimbursement
Accidents are never expected when they occur. If your garage sustained damages due to a fire or a fallen tree, it’s likely that you will receive a reimbursement from one of the insurance policies that you hold. The damages sustained and how they were dispersed will come into play when an insurance claims adjuster is determining the facts about the incident.
Comprehensive Insurance
If you have an auto insurance policy that is comprehensive, this covers the cost of any damages that occur to your car. Under this type of policy, you would receive a reimbursement for any type of damages that your car might sustain, even though it was stored in your garage. If you chose another type of coverage, yyour auto insurance policy will probably not cover the damages to your car. In this case, you would have to determine which items are covered via your homeowner’s insurance policy.
Only Paying Partial Settlement
The provider of your homeowner’s insurance policy may not want to fully cover the damages to your vehicle. In cases where the insurance provider only wants to offer a partial settlement, you may need to step up your actions and become more aggressive with the situation. If they don’t budge on the decision, you may have to hire an attorney to help you receive a reimbursement.
Defining Contents
In most cases, your homeowner’s insurance policy will explicitly state that the “contents” of your home are covered when they are attached to your home. In cases in the past where an attached garage has been present, the language used in a homeowner’s insurance policy has been interpreted to also include contents that are in the garage.
A Homebound Item
Even though your automobile is covered by a separate insurance policy, it will count as being contents of your home since it is currently a homebound item when damage occurs. A claims adjuster may try to specify that the car should be claimed under an insurance policy. Insurance companies don’t want to pay any more than they have to. You may need to refute this type of assertion and refer to the fine print of your homeowner’s insurance policy. It will indicate if your car is considered as “contents” in the attached garage. In addition, you may have to prove that the damage sustained to your garage was nonintentional.
Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!