Not the End of the World: Fighting a Denial of Coverage for Roof Damage that is Based on Wear and Tear
Within the realm of homeowners’ insurance roofing claims, among the most common reasons why insurers deny claims is wear and tear. “Wear and tear” refers to the damage to your roof that happens as your roof ages, particularly as the roof reaches the end of its usable life. Wear and tear is almost always excluded by the terms of your insurance policy, so insurance carriers will deny a claim if they believe that the claimed damage was caused by normal wear and tear rather than by a covered event, such as a storm or a hurricane.
That doesn’t mean, however, that you should just accept the denial of your claim based on wear and tear. In many cases, the carrier’s decision is baseless, uninformed, or both. And often, the carrier’s adjuster on your claim will fail to consider facts that point towards a covered peril as the culprit.
For example, your carrier’s field adjuster, often the person on the ground deciding whether there’s been storm damage to your home, will do a superficial job of inspecting your property. Rather than taking the time to check the integrity of your tiles or shingles, they will use a drone to conduct a “visual inspection.” That means that the adjuster will only look around your roof for any obvious damage rather than look for the real danger: damage to the roof’s underlayment, which is the water barrier under the tiles or shingles that actually stops water from draining into your property. A visual inspection will reveal only the most obvious damage; it won’t reveal potentially significant damage to the underlayment that happens when high speed winds tear at the screws holding your shingles or tiles together, ripping them out of place and opening holes in the underlayment.
If your carrier denies your claim, we can help. Call us to speak with a property-damage attorney who will look at your case and give you options to recover your policy benefits.
Jonathan Hoffman, Esq.
Learn more about Jonathan here!
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