Page 21 - Book1

Claim Your Insurance Lottery Ticket

IX

How to legally pay for your deductibles

Paying your deductibles

A deductible is the amount that you pay out of pocket for an insurance
claim before your homeowners insurance company will pay out for the
remainder of the loss. You pay your deductible on a per-claim basis, meaning
if your home is damaged in two different storms that were a month apart,
you’d have to pay two separate deductibles. The only exception to this is in
the state of Florida, where, if your home is damaged in a hurricane, you pay a
hurricane deductible ​per season​ rather than for each individual storm. That
deductible would then apply to any subsequent hurricane damage until the
end of the season, which runs June through November. If a single claim
involves two or more property coverage components, you only need to pay
one deductible. That means if both your home’s structure, your garage, and
your personal property are damaged by a house fire, you may report your
home’s structural damage at the outset and personal property loss at a later
date, but you’d only need to pay that out-of-pocket deductible once.
In addition to covering your home, personal property and living
expenses, your policy also covers your ​personal liability​ expenses and pays
for injured guests’ ​medical payments​ in the event of an accident in your home.
But unlike your property coverages, you don’t pay a deductible on liability
claims.
Many people, for example, don’t know how a hurricane deductible
works. It's not the same as the deductible on a regular home insurance claim.
For hurricane damage, you choose the amount you want to pay when you buy
your policy. It can be either $500, one percent, 2 percent, 3 percent, 5
percent or 10 percent-- but here’s where many people get confused—that
percentage is of your total policy coverage, not your claim amount.

Standard deductible
This is the standard, fixed-dollar amount deductible that
you pay out of pocket when you file a claim for a covered loss. A
standard homeowners insurance policy deductible is usually in
the range of $500 to $2,000, although lower and higher
deductible home insurance plans are also common. Dollar
amount deductibles work like this: if your deductible is $1,000
and you file a roof claim totaling $6,500 in damages, you pay the
first $1,000 of the repair costs out of pocket before your
insurance company sends you a check for the remaining
$5,500.

Percentage deductibles
Percentage deductibles are specific to windstorm, named
storm, and hurricane-related claims and are calculated based on
the percentage (usually 1% to 10%) of your home’s insured

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