Forget about that idea of yours that you thought of while you were sitting on your couch and eating some warmed up pizza in your West Hartford, Connecticut home. You can not go through all of your receipts for repairs you made over the year and use them to file a claim with your home insurance carrier.
You may have a lot of bills to pay and could use some extra money from your insurance company, but you can never collect for small repairs that are not due to a covered peril on your policy. If you read the terms of your home insurance policy, you will see, among other things that you have only a certain amount of time to report damage and file a claim. If, for instance, a windstorm blew off some tiles on your roof, and you ignored it for 10 months, you will be questioned as to why you did not report it back in January when it happened. Your home insurance policy requires you to report each individual incident as a separate claim.
Even if you have a bunch of legitimate small losses that are not just normal wear and tear or lack of maintenance, you can not combine incidents to make a bigger claim so it will be well above your deductible. Your kid may throw a baseball through your window and it may cost $300 to replace. Two months later, a limb may fall from a tree and put a big crack in your concrete patio. To get it patched up might cost you another $300.
We understand that money can be tight and that you do not want to pay for accidents or incidents that are covered by insurance. Give us a call and an independent agent might be able to get you a lower deductible so you can collect on smaller, individual claims that can occur throughout the year.