fern - That clause seems to be rather made up by your agent rather than a provision in the policy - I would clarify that directly w/the insurance company A homeowners policy is in effect for the date on the declaration page typically a one yr span and can only lapse if you are not in good standing (payments) at which time they legally have to give you notice that you will be dropped unless you have your payments w/in a certain time period - Plenty of people are away from their primary home for various reasons for extended periods of time - how on earth can an insurance company prove or disprove a period of time and whether it was vacation or not - please ck w/you co. good luck

Thank you all for the tips. As an update, I spoke with Nationwide on Monday (Memorial day, so that was a waste, my bad) and again this morning, after we had a chance to get into the house yesterday and assess our workload. Thankfully, I mis-read the cancellation notice and, as two25acres pointed out, we do have two weeks before the insurance is actually cancelled. We can take pictures of the repairs and submit them for review. However, they refuse to extend the deadline beyond two weeks to give us time to complete all of the work. I asked them for just one month. Apparently the underwriter (who I did not speak with, this came via the sales agent) thought the idea that we could fix a porch, fence, and tree in a month was laughable and had already decided the risk was not worth it. My husband has been in construction for 20+ years so I am sure we could have done it, but c'est la vie. It has surpassed my level of patience. Moving on to find a new insurance company! And ASAP too because I do not want the bank to find insurance for us! Thank you for the heads up on that guys. Two25acres: Will we still need to say we have been dropped by Nationwide when we shop for new insurance, if the policy has not yet actually been cancelled yet? Also, the previous owner had insurance on the house with no issues. I am going to call their agent specifically...do you think they will now take issue with things that were fine before?

When I asked my agent he said I shouldn't have said anything to the insurance company and that they would have been none the wiser. I think if you intentionally lie to your insurance company about a vacant house and you need to make a claim and they could show that you basically lied, then they may be able to deny the claim. But if the 'error' was done by your insurance agent (ie. he should have realized it was vacant and advised you that you needed to change your policy) and you needed to make a claim, they'd probably have to honour it. It was their employee's fault. Some agents may unintentionally do this or maybe even be willing to take whatever slap on the wrist might happen if their 'error' is noticed in order to keep their clients happy. So that's probably why he told you that you shouldn't have mentioned it. Now that you have, he can't claim that it was an oversight on his part so you'll have to change your policy. But that's just my opinion. That may not be the case and maybe your agent made a huge blunder that could have cost you if something had occurred. Insurance companies like to make people think that claims can be denied for the tiniest infractions and they will deny legitimate claims all the time because if even a fraction of the claimants give up and go away, that's money in their pocket. If you fight the denial then the worse case is that they have to pay it. Why would they jump to that position right away? They aren't your friend.

We're not military...and...as an employee of USAA, they get a 10% discount and it was still higher. Update: The past company I was with for 3 weeks....that was the increase in sq footage people. That was fraud. Now this company, the owner emailed, said he got my paperwork I sent where the roofer signed off for USAA saying it was a Class 4 Decra roof(hail proof), but they need him to fill out paper work for THIS insurance company and he refuses. So they can call for a roof inspection, free of charge to do this and that will give me the roof discount, get rid of the $1065 bill. But have they....nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! The agent wants me to agree to stay with his agency before he does anything. Nope. Changing agencies and they can order an inspection. It will take several weeks to clear it all up....but it sounds promising! YAY! Elmer.... YOU were right on THIS one. I was wrong. It was an incompetant agent that just didn't care. She just wanted me to "go away". The 1st agency...well.....that one was fraud.