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.

Check with your local or state bar association. Sometimes they have consumer lines you can call. I can't believe the insurance commissioner couldn't give you an answer regarding whether the state statute trumps the release.

A ticket should be public record, but contact the officer who was at the scene. I imagine it could be that it's not public data until they either admit guilt and pay the fine or go to court. Did you get a copy of the police report yet? If so, it should have the insurance company and policy number of all drivers, including other info. Often it will say whether a ticket was issued but it's usually not a big deal to call the officer. It might take a few days to get back to you. Oh, wait, I see you did get the report. Whether a ticket was issued really won't make a lot of difference though as far as repairing the vehicle. Being on the road automatically makes the driver partly to blame. Just depends on how much. Around here, 20%-30% is pretty common. I don't keep an attorney on hand. I know of some I would use for certain things but they also charge $200-$600 or more per hour. I've represented myself in court 3 times and won every time. If you have a serious injury, yes, I'd say consult a lawyer, but if you're going to have one represent you on negotiating for a car repair... SHEESH! You *really* want to pay $400+ per hour to have him/her talk on the phone and write some letters, then relay to you? I sure wouldn't! LOL I highly doubt you'll stand a chance of being reimbursed for legal fees for negotiating a car repair! The insurance company is under no obligation to buy you a new car unless you have special coverage. They go by the insurance rate books for book value on a vehicle. And no, things like new tires, a new battery, etc will not increase the value as some people think it should. Low mileage will raise value and good condition but often an old car in excellent shape isn't going to be worth what the owners usually think it should be. And in fairness to the insurance company, it shouldn't unless everyone is ready to pay more for their insurance. So if book value is $10k and the damage approaches it, they'll probably total it and ink you a check. If it's under that, they'll pay for the repair. And if you choose to not repair the vehicle they can deduct a portion, something like 25%-30% as I recall. Now keep in mind laws vary from state to state so asking legal advice online is a precarious thing to do. You will need to do your homework. Also keep in mind that most of the adjusters have more than one person they're dealing with so they might not be available to you at every moment you want them. Questions and the like can be routed through your agent. That's what they get paid for. They certainly should be able to tell you a time frame for things and whether the delays are normal or not. Sometimes it can be a good thing to have it totaled, buy it back and fix it. However it depends on what they can get for salvage value too. And occasionally they have people lined up to get insurance recoveries so it can up the price of it. I negotiated my one settlement as $___ plus I keep the vehicle. Although that was an old car and they really didn't want it anyway. It's a stressful time. Keep your head. Keep calm. Things will work out. BTW, Great Northern Insurance Agency in Chicago is an insurance broker so they handle several companies. This is neither good nor bad. I used to be with a broker. I liked the idea of several options since my agent would regularly check which company had better rates for me and would switch me around. Now with a single company, I have to do the checking. Anyway, it should be easy enough to do a little homework from the info you have to determine if it's this agency or if there's an insurance company called Great Northern. If you want to do more legwork, then deal directly with the other insurance company. If you want to let your company do the work, let them. You might get a better settlement if you represent yourself but you'll trade off time and frustration, plus you'll be going up against a "professional" most likely so do you feel confident? As long as you understand the assignments of blame and the like and understand and research values, etc, you could do OK. There's truth to the statement that insurance companies want to settle for as little as they can, but there's another factor few people understand. The quicker they can settle it, the less it costs them in some ways too so if they spend a few more dollars to get a quick settlement, it's to their benefit. This is why insurance companies settle rather quickly with each other even taking a bit less. Close the file and move on. Have you had a chance to get an estimate on it yet? That should give you more info on deciding how you want to approach it. Naturally all caveats and disclaimers apply since my experiences are with Minnesota laws, not Illinois. Around here, replacement coverage only applies on Homeowners policies. With a new car, certainly it's going to be different and they'd be more amenable to totaling a 3 week old vehicle since the reclaim value on that car would be quite high. Fix it and sell it. I had an uncle in the auto parts business for a lot of years and he bought totals, fixed and sold them, among other things. Good luck. Try not to let it bug you too much. As long as nobody was seriously hurt, the car is a small thing in the grand scheme of life.

Lascatx, sounds like you had the same type of leak/flood we experienced, except in my case there was nobody home so the water gushed unimpeded through the house for 18 hours! And Bonnie, our situation is very similar to yours; we also called ServPro immediately and they were at the house within an hour or so--on a Sunday afternoon! They did an amazing job drying things out and actually had all the flooring off within about 36 hours of the flood to completely dry out the underfloor and avoid mold which is a HUGE issue as you can imagine in Miami FL. Like your MIL's house they placed large fans, dehumidifiers etc. and checked on a daily basis to ensure the moisture levels were low. We also reported the damage immediately on Monday morning and the insurance adjuster told us the same thing, that ServPro was exactly the right choice. As for an update, the day before Thanksgiving after almost daily email inquiries for weeks I finally got the paperwork saying the claim was approved, along with a statement of loss I had to sign and notarize to process the payment. I sent that in earlier this week and was notified yesterday the payment will be processed (hopefully meaning a check issued!) within 10-14 business days. Based on that I told my contractor we can get started. I picked up floor tile samples yesterday, focusing on in stock materials because his floor guys will start work December 10th. Even if I don't have payment in hand, everything seems legally in order so I am comfortable moving forward. Once the work is done I can get the house on the rental market again although I hope things aren't too slow during the holidays.