Subrogation is a concept that's well-known among legal and insurance companies but sometimes not by the policyholders they represent. Rather than leave it to the professionals, it would be in your benefit to know the steps of how it works. The more information you have about it, the more likely it is that relevant proceedings will work out favorably.
Every insurance policy you own is a promise that, if something bad happens to you, the company that insures the policy will make good in a timely manner. If your property suffers fire damage, for example, your property insurance steps in to remunerate you or pay for the repairs, subject to state property damage laws.
But since determining who is financially responsible for services or repairs is sometimes a tedious, lengthy affair – and time spent waiting often adds to the damage to the policyholder – insurance firms in many cases decide to pay up front and figure out the blame later. They then need a method to get back the costs if, when all is said and done, they weren't actually in charge of the expense.
Let's Look at an Example
You arrive at the emergency room with a gouged finger. You give the nurse your health insurance card and she takes down your coverage information. You get stitched up and your insurer gets a bill for the medical care. But on the following afternoon, when you get to work – where the injury occurred – you are given workers compensation forms to turn in. Your workers comp policy is in fact responsible for the hospital visit, not your health insurance company. The latter has a right to recover its costs in some way.
How Subrogation Works
This is where subrogation comes in. It is the method that an insurance company uses to claim payment when it pays out a claim that turned out not to be its responsibility. Some companies have in-house property damage lawyers and personal injury attorneys, or a department dedicated to subrogation; others contract with a law firm. Under ordinary circumstances, only you can sue for damages done to your person or property. But under subrogation law, your insurer is given some of your rights for making good on the damages. It can go after the money originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.
Why Do I Need to Know This?
For a start, if you have a deductible, your insurer wasn't the only one that had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you have a stake in the outcome as well – to be precise, $1,000. If your insurance company is lax about bringing subrogation cases to court, it might opt to get back its expenses by raising your premiums. On the other hand, if it has a capable legal team and goes after them efficiently, it is doing you a favor as well as itself. If all is recovered, you will get your full thousand-dollar deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found one-half at fault), you'll typically get half your deductible back, based on the laws in most states.
Furthermore, if the total expense of an accident is more than your maximum coverage amount, you may have had to pay the difference. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as Family law Las Vegas NV, pursue subrogation and succeeds, it will recover your costs in addition to its own.
All insurers are not created equal. When comparing, it's worth comparing the reputations of competing firms to determine whether they pursue winnable subrogation claims; if they do so with some expediency; if they keep their clients informed as the case proceeds; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements quickly so that you can get your money back and move on with your life. If, instead, an insurance firm has a reputation of paying out claims that aren't its responsibility and then covering its profitability by raising your premiums, you'll feel the sting later.