Insurance says no "act of God"

[daltontrees]

On 09/02/2018 at 16:43, Jon Heuch said:

I am afraid there is the norm and then what you actually have for insurance. The norm is this:

 

i) you may have insurance that covers both your building and your contents. In which case you need read no further.

ii) you have separate buildings and contents cover (different policies either with the same insurer or with different insurers). In this case your buildings insurer would cover damage to your property but the third party/public liability risk clause is likely to be in your contents insurance. This is not the case with ALL policies but is the norm (or was the last time I looked!). So your tree falling and causing damage/injury to a third party is a matter for your contents insurer. If you don't have contents insurance you don't have insurance to cover this.

Just taking Axa's HomeSmart policy as an example, public liability/ property ownre's liability covers responsibility for contents and buildings.

[daltontrees]

On 09/02/2018 at 18:07, devon TWiG said:

Dalton trees .....it would appear from what you have said that "acts of god" are not covered by insurance then why have insurance ?     I would assume you personally  would act in a non negligent way with regards to your own trees and if it was a storm which caused them to fall and cause injury / damage to others then your insurers would say they will not accept any claim against you , or could the injured party then attempt to sue ,by trying to prove negligence ?? ... If the situation is such that any damage caused by falling trees / branches was always the responsibility  of the owners / insurers then surely many would find this unacceptable and who would then have trees on their property ??, especially in high risk target areas ( roads for example ) . It does surprise me whilst travelling around how many trees I see that to me are a bit dodgy and would not like to be responsible for , yet , it is rare to hear of any  incidents .

Ignoring the matter of insurance for now, the law only holds a tree owner responsible for damage or harm that could or should reasonably have been foreseen. That becomes a matter of proving negligence. Insurance might cover the negligent tree owner. Insurance is a whole lot less likely to cover the hapless victim of a freak healthy tree accident, precisely because the tree owner is not liable at law, and hence not at insurance.

 

Why have insurance? That's a different question. Insurance is for lots of things and people have it for those things. It's not for everything, and insurers are in the business of paying out less than they take in.