House destroyed - can't pay mortgage

The BS has £75k to lose. They have a very strong incentive to help you sort out the insurance question.

Talk to the BS (face to face if possible). Make sure that they have

*all* the available information. Write down a list of facts that you can give them. Ask them for advice + help. They have all the technical skills you would need. Work with them.

I am surprised at the insurance problem. I presume that the insurance was taken out for a year and that the DDs were a component of the premium. I am not sure of how valid it is to cancel insurance on the grounds of x missed payments when the situation/payments were in the process of being reviewed.

Flop

Reply to
Flop
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In message , Flop writes

I am not, say I agree to insure for a year and only make the first three months payments. At what point would you consider that I was no longer insured? Would I still be covered in month, four? How about months five or six? Normally if you fail to pay cover ends on the due date.

Failure to make the regular payments is normally grounds to negate the cover because there is normally a term to that effect within the policy documents such as *If You do not pay a premium on time, We will assume that you intend to cancel the policy and cover under this policy will end from the date the payment was due.*

The point here is that there is a need to prove that it was the intention of the Insured to make the payments and that it is the fault of the Insurer for failing to collect them through Direct Debit. If it can be shown that the change in details were passed to the company and they failed to collect then they may be liable. But against that is if this has gone to the second month and nothing has been done to make the payment and the Insurer has written five times chasing payment then it sounds like it wasn't the Insurance Company who were negligent in failing to try to collect the premium. We can only surmise that to be the case from what we have been told but why didn't the Son try to chase them when it became obvious a payment had been missed.

Reply to
Paul Harris

Apologies if it is irrelevant but (i) where were your sister and her husband living and (ii) did anyone have insurance on the contents as opposed to the building?

Reply to
Robin

IME, not when the situation is:

"Both she and her husband are on long-term Incapacity Benefit as they are unable to work. They have no savings and what possessions they did own, apart from their car, went up in flames along with the house. The only source of income apart from benefits was the rental from the house, which has stopped with immediate effect."

Reply to
Fergus O'Rourke

In article , Paul Harris writes

I have personal experience of this in the motor insurance field. I had a

3 month old company car written off whilst parked outside my house, by a young driver who subsequently failed a breathalyser test. His car was written off too.

Despite being a pretty clear cut case, his insurance was very slow in responding to mine, despite being informed that the cost of providing me with a replacement vehicle was ramping up their costs.

His insurance company then announced that he paid his policy in quarterly instalments, and that he had missed the payment date and thus his insurance was null and void, and they weren't going to pay a penny. The payment date was after the accident and he it seems had cancelled the direct debit as he no longer had his car.

Our insurance Co (Sun Alliance I think it was) accepted this without too much question, did the repairs as if the accident had been my fault, and I ended up in the local county court as we had to sue the other driver for the costs of keeping me on the road, which were awarded to us at the rate of £20 per month.

Reply to
kkm

Did the police also prosecute him for driving without insurance? The insurance companies cannot (or should not be able to) have it both ways

- either the whole insurance policy was (because of the missed payment after the accident) declared null and void (ie treated as though it had never existed) and he was not insured at the time of the accident, or he was insured at the time of the accident in which case his insurance company should have paid up.

Reply to
Graham Murray

I've no idea. They did him for drink driving and I think he lost his licence for 18 months plus a fine. However it was around a month after the incident that he missed the payment and they invalidated his policy.

Reply to
kkm

Surely insurance is paid in advance, so his previous quarterly payment covered him until after the accident. If the car was written off it was pointless, if not impossible, to cover it for the next quarter. Of course, there may be a notice period for termination, but what if the person responsible is killed?.

Chris

Reply to
chrisj.doran

Surely insurance is paid in advance, so his previous quarterly payment covered him until after the accident. If the car was written off it was pointless, if not impossible, to cover it for the next quarter. Of course, there may be a notice period for termination, but what if the person responsible is killed?.

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Depending on the contract (which AIUI is usually "payment for 12 months cover by monthly instalments" rather than "one month's cover per payment") I would assume the insurer has a claim on the estate.

Reply to
Martin

Surely insurance is paid in advance, so his previous quarterly payment covered him until after the accident. If the car was written off it was pointless, if not impossible, to cover it for the next quarter. Of course, there may be a notice period for termination, but what if the person responsible is killed?.

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Normally it's an annual insurance paid in instalments, so if you write-off the car before the end you still have to pay all the premium.

But I'm surprised that they could get out of a third party claim on this basis and doubt that the ombudsman would uphold it

tim

Reply to
tim....

The remaining premium for the year could just be taken from any payout.

But it seems the insurance company is relying on small print to wriggle out of the claim: perhaps they're reckoning on a percentage of claimants on direct debit, cancelling the DD before they're received a payout cheque, and have put such a clause in to catch people out.

So the insurance was valid, but the company are not paying out. This is unfair for the third party in the case.

Reply to
bart.c

Whenever an insured person dies in a car accident (or a house fire) it's almost certain that their next insurance DD will fail, as the bank will freeze their account. So why doesn't every fatal accident cause the deceased to become uninsured at the time of the accident if paying by instalments?

Chris

Reply to
chrisj.doran

"bart.c" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

It's also - AIUI - illegal now. I suspect this story is not particularly recent.

AIUI, if there's fraud or missed premiums or whatever, then insurers HAVE to pay their RTA liabilities (to any third parties), but they can then reclaim those costs from the policy holder.

Reply to
Adrian

The insurance company can wriggle out of their responsibilities if they have written to the policy holder giving notice of policy cancellation. In this case the OP doesn't enlighten us if this has happened.

Reply to
Fredxx

In article , tim.... writes

I'd tend to agree with you tim, but since our insurance company agreed with their decision and the guy clearly didn't have a spare 20k sitting around so taking him to court would have been fruitless (as it took 5 yrs plus for him to pay off the replacement car bill). I doubt the company had any sort of no claims bonus, as the boss had a bad habit of damaging his V12 Jags.

Reply to
kkm

But that can't do this retrospectively, which is the case here

tim

Reply to
tim....

No they wont.

tim

Reply to
tim....

this was just laziness.

The people who you "take to court" are the insurance company. It is they who decided not to pay.

Theoretically I don't see why the claimants couldn't pay the missing premiums to keep the policy "live" so that it would pay their claim

tim

Reply to
tim....

"tim...." wrote

Would they have paid the premiums if they *didn't* have the claim?

I wonder where I could find an insurance company that would first let me see if I'm going to claim this year, and only then pay the premium & collect the insurance....?!!

Reply to
Tim

Hear, hear, it's an unlawful and hence unenforceable clause. If proof is required I'm sure I read about it in the letting bible - A Practical Approach to Landlord and Tenant by Simon Garner & Alexandra Frith

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Reply to
Daytona

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