What Every Insurance Policy holder Ought to Know About Subrogation

Subrogation is a term that's well-known in insurance and legal circles but often not by the customers who hire them. Even if you've never heard the word before, it is in your benefit to understand an overview of the process. The more you know, the more likely an insurance lawsuit will work out in your favor.

Every insurance policy you own is an assurance that, if something bad happens to you, the firm that insures the policy will make good in a timely fashion. If you get hurt at work, your company's workers compensation agrees to pay for medical services. Employment lawyers handle the details; you just get fixed up.

But since figuring out who is financially responsible for services or repairs is sometimes a heavily involved affair – and delay sometimes adds to the damage to the victim – insurance companies usually decide to pay up front and assign blame later. They then need a way to get back the costs if, ultimately, they weren't actually in charge of the expense.

For Example

You are in an auto accident. Another car crashed into yours. The police show up to assess the situation, you exchange insurance details, and you go on your way. You have comprehensive insurance and file a repair claim. Later police tell the insurance companies that the other driver was entirely to blame and his insurance should have paid for the repair of your vehicle. How does your insurance company get its money back?

How Does Subrogation Work?

This is where subrogation comes in. It is the process that an insurance company uses to claim payment when it pays out a claim that turned out not to be its responsibility. Some insurance firms have in-house property damage lawyers and personal injury attorneys, or a department dedicated to subrogation; others contract with a law firm. Normally, only you can sue for damages to your self or property. But under subrogation law, your insurer is considered to have some of your rights in exchange for having taken care of the damages. It can go after the money originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.

How Does This Affect Me?

For one thing, if you have a deductible, it wasn't just your insurer that had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you have a stake in the outcome as well – to the tune of $1,000. If your insurer is lax about bringing subrogation cases to court, it might choose to recover its losses by raising your premiums and call it a day. On the other hand, if it has a knowledgeable legal team and pursues those cases aggressively, it is doing you a favor as well as itself. If all is recovered, you will get your full deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found one-half accountable), you'll typically get half your deductible back, based on the laws in most states.

Furthermore, if the total loss of an accident is more than your maximum coverage amount, you could be in for a stiff bill. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as criminal lawyer Hillsboro, OR, successfully press a subrogation case, it will recover your losses as well as its own.

All insurance companies are not created equal. When shopping around, it's worth looking at the records of competing agencies to find out if they pursue valid subrogation claims; if they resolve those claims without dragging their feet; if they keep their customers informed as the case goes on; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements quickly so that you can get your deductible back and move on with your life. If, instead, an insurance agency has a record of honoring claims that aren't its responsibility and then protecting its profitability by raising your premiums, you'll feel the sting later.