At long last, your loan package has been approved, your closing date is just days away, everything you own has been packed, and all that remains is a quick call to your insurance agent to line up a homeowner’s policy. That’s when the bad dream can begin.
No one plans on a chemical spill but because accidents can occur, the time to figure out how to manage a chemical spill isn’t after a spill happens but before. Because different chemicals can have different harmful effects and must be handled in a unique way, contingency planning is the best way to minimize potential problems.
With the arrival of warm, balmy weather, yard sales begin to pop up everywhere. While a yard sale may transform your spring cleaning chores into a profitable day of getting rid of unwanted items, it can also create a setting for a legal nightmare. For example, you’re legally liable if someone at the yard sale slips, trips, or falls and injures themselves. Such scenarios are exactly why you must know what your homeowner’s insurance covers before you take on the responsibility of inviting yard sale-goers onto your property.
An employee in a high school’s finance department steals $279,000 to support her gambling habit and cover her mortgage payments. A bank employee in Pennsylvania allegedly embezzles $750,000. The former CEO of a Colorado insurance brokerage pleads guilty to stealing $353,400 from the brokerage’s employee benefits plan. The office manager of a Texas law firm gets four years in prison for forging checks and depositing client payments in her personal bank account.
Quite a bit of attention is being paid lately to floods and the devastation they leave behind. In the wake of Katrina, more and more questions have been raised about what kind of preventative measures would have lessened the catastrophic effects of such an event. How well equipped are individual homeowners to handle financial consequences on their own, as opposed to relying solely on agencies like FEMA to provide them with economic assistance? Are Americans taking advantage of the nation’s flood insurance program?
With the sudden presence of traffic violation cameras (red light, speeding, aggressive driving) in states across the country, many Americans feel that their privacy is violated. Others believe that this is a government ploy for fundraising, or to replace the local police department. Many people are curious as to the effect a red light camera violation will have on their insurance premium.
There is little disagreement among policyholders that an insurance policy is an insanely boring piece of literature. Too often we get our policy and until we have a claim, it is filed with barely a second glance. Is there a way to make reading insurance policies more interesting and more productive? Let’s try.
Imagine waking up on a frigid winter morning, throwing on your bathrobe and stumbling down the stairs to make a pot of coffee—only to find your kitchen is filled with water. Each winter, about a quarter of a million families find themselves in scenarios like this all because of water pipes that freeze and burst.
In an August 2006 ruling, Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled that the claimant in the case of Michael G. Blakeslee Jr. vs. Platt Brothers & Co, who was injured when co-workers tried to help during a seizure, is entitled to workers’ compensation benefits. Typically, workplace injuries caused by a seizure wouldn’t be eligible for compensation because the injuries arise from the medical condition itself and not from conditions in the work area. In the Blakeslee case, the claimant received two dislocated shoulders on February 13, 2002, when three co-workers tried to restrain him during his seizure. He had fallen near a large steel scale, and then started flailing his arms and legs as he regained consciousness.
If you’re currently renting a house or apartment, you should strongly consider an investment in renter’s insurance. No one likes to think about the possibility of a fire or a burglary, but these are real possibilities.