If you had full coverage of your own, your insurance company should take care of your bills and deal with the other insurance company regardless. If you only had liablity there may be a problem. If the other driver was at fault (or not), had only liabliy, and DIDN'T file a claim AGAINST YOUR insurance company, your insurance company doesn't have a dog in the fight. If you file a claim with the other drivers insurance company, they can just send you a form letter that says their own investigation concluded that it was primarily your fault, have a nice life. In other words, go pound sand. Then you have to take the other party to court. Hopefully they're just slow, but it can happen just as I said.

I am in the middle of a large loss fire claim. My sentiments pretty much echo juliatallmadge's (wish I could reach her to find out how it all turned out). Mine was a high-end single family residential rental. The renter was at fault, so not only do I have the experience of dealing with my own insurance company (State Farm), I will be getting experience dealing with the renter's TWO insurance companies (one is for the general renter's policy and the other is for a general liability umbrella policy). All I can say is, it has almost been one year and the house is still standing unoccupied and untouched. The inside of the home was completely smoked out and partially structurally damaged. Only now is the claim being subrogated by my insurance company, which has paid to term limits, to the tenant's insurance company. As juliatallmadge stated, it looks like the tenant's insurance companies will try to micro-negotiate everything, so I am in the process of shopping attorneys. Since the fire was the fault of the tenant's, I deserve to be compensated for my loss. But I get the distinct feeling at this stage this will not happen without legal representation and quite possibly a legal battle that may go all the way to court. I will know more as this situation unfolds in the next 2-6 months. I can only say that State Farm has been wonderful. But be very certain to read your policy thoroughly, because even your claims adjuster can make big mistakes that you might catch. We caught a 90K mistake in our favor. Also, DO NOT make the very common mistake of being underinsured. If we had not been underinsured, we would already be started on the construction while waiting for the tenant's insurance companies to settle with us. Take pictures and videos of EVERYTHING. Open your drawers and cabinets and shoot pictures. Shoot every single feature in your house. And then store those someplace safe outside of your own home. Also, because I saw it happen, keep your computer backed up on a hard drive and store it outside of your home or in a fire/flood proof vault, as well. In my opinion, $1,200 a year for homeowner's insurance is chump change. I was paying more than that and was still underinsured.

I would say no. Years ago my inlaws filed two claims in a year....one was for damage to a visiting car done by their large dog jumping up on it and scratching it. Then a few months later lighting struck the home and took out most of the electronics. They got dropped. It REALLY sucks that you pay for insurance, then when you genuinely need to use it, they drop you. It doesn't seem like it should even be legal.

"I feel like my premiums are paying to insure claims against somebody else's use of a snowmobile, boat, pogo stick." Our current house was built (and we bought it when it was in the framing stage) in 1990. All of the houses around here were built with wood shake roofs. (Not wood shingles - heavy shakes.) A couple of years ago when we were going to be getting a new roof, I contacted our homeowner's insurance agent to let him know, and I asked him how much of a discount we'd get. Bear in mind that wood shake roofs are generally unrated, meaning unless they are treated with fire retardant, they are going to burn like crazy. A composition shingle roof is Class C rated, meaning that it is somewhat fire resistant, but they will burn. Our new roof is a Gerard stone-coated steel roof, which is Class A rated - one of the best roofing materials you can have (which would also include concrete or clay tiles). Anyway, our agent said that the new-roof discount would be very minimal because we do not live in a fire danger area. The risk of there being a fire was so low as to make a substantial discount not possible. That was January 2016. In 2017, as everyone knows, there were horrible fires in California. And when our policy renewed towards the end of 2017, our premiums were increased by 17%. Hubs and I have owned three homes together for a total of 37 years (6 years for the first one, 3 years for the second one, and 28 years for our current home). I have made ONE claim against my auto insurance, and that was back in 1979 when someone smashed out the rear window of my car. My husband has never made an auto insurance claim. No one has ever made claims against us/our auto or homeowner's insurance. And in 37 years we have never made a claim against our homeowner's insurance. So, I asked our homeowner's insurance company why our premium increased 17%. Yep, you guess it. It's because the insurance industry is trying to recoup the losses they suffered by paying out claims to the people whose homes were lost/damaged because of the fires. There is no fire danger to our home so we don't get a decent discount for having a brand new Class A roof, but we live in a state that suffered devastating fires so we have to help bail out the insurance company. Don't get me wrong -- I have extreme empathy for the folks who were (and are now) affected by California wildfires, but shouldn't insurance companies do a better job of investing their assets to have funds to cover payouts, rather than placing the burden on the folks who don't make claims?