Claiming Under Your Acts of God Coverage
When your home or business is damaged due to a natural calamity such as a devastating hail storms that struck Dallas recently, your trauma may be assuaged by the fact that your home or business is covered by insurance. You call your insurance company and discuss your predicament with its representatives. However, you get the shock of your life when they tell you that the calamity that destroyed your home or business s not part of your insurance coverage. You inquire further and you are informed that an acts of God occurrence is specifically excluded in your policy.
While you may not be able to do anything about the exclusion in your current policy, it is best that you familiarize yourself with this concept so you will know better the next time you get insurance for your home or business.
Acts of God
Acts of God is a type of insurance coverage that entitles you to proceeds for occurrences or acts of nature that cannot be controlled. These include storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, high winds and damages that result from war such as a nuclear war. In practice, some insurance policies exclude from coverage damages that are caused by acts of God.
Studying Your Policy
Because of this exclusion, you need to study carefully any homeowners’ insurance policy you are getting for your home. You need to know whether or not it covers acts of God occurrences. If it does cover such events, you also need to find out the specific occurrences that are covered as it may not include all acts of God. For instance, your policy may cover physical damage to your home such as broken roof or windows but it may exclude losses due to spoiled food caused by the extended power outage brought about by the hurricane. You need to know these things so you can obtain additional coverage for events that your policy will not cover.
Some insurance companies might deliberately make their policies vague to leave room for doubt on whether a particular act of God will be covered. They may resort to do this strategy in order to evade paying you later on should such an event occur. To be on the safe side, discuss these vague provisions with them before you take on the insurance policy to avoid arguments later on.
Options for Excluded Acts of God
If your insurance policy clearly excludes certain events like flooding, you need to assess if you are at risk of experiencing such a calamity in your home or business. If your neighbors experienced flood damage in the past, then you might need to shell out extra money to get a flood insurance coverage. For these excluded occurrences, you have the following options:
You may opt to look for another insurance company that covers all of the Acts of God that may be applicable to your situation.
You may get a separate and additional insurance for the excluded events from another insurance company.
Using the same insurance company and policy, you can purchase a rider or an add-on policy that will provide additional coverage for the Acts of God damages excluded in your original policy.
To learn more about Acts of God coverage, you may wish to consult an experienced insurance claims lawyer who can advise you on your options.
