How Long Do You Have To File An Insurance Claim

I had a family member recently have a fender bender or car accident, so to speak, and they were questioning how long do I have to file the claim because they're not quite sure if they want to file that. Now I actually have a cheat sheet here because it got pretty in depth. I started looking up what states are allowing how long you have to file a claim because they're different in every state. Most insurance companies want two things to have happen and there's two things that you should follow directly. One, if it is an accident that's over $1,000 or there's an injury or there's a death in most to almost every single state, you're supposed to call the police anyways. Now in this case, my family member didn't actually have to have the police come out. They called them and they just asked them over the phone, what's the scenario? And they actually made a police report based on just them talking to the police. It's actually in Michigan and it was kind of weird to understand that part because it's just weird not to have the police come out anymore. That's not always the case. Most of the time, at least in today's age, they're still going to show up and someone might get a ticket or someone might just get written down. The insurance is all handled on the paperwork and you have a police report. So it's very important that if you're going to file a claim later in the future, that you have a police report stating what the situation is. I highly recommend that you take photos, especially of the other car, your car, the license plates, all of the data that if you are going to go back to them, it's going to be better that you have the details and the information that the insurance company is going to want to have. The second is insurance actually requires you to file a claim if you have had one. Now that's not exactly the advice you're going to get from an agent, probably not the advice that I typically give out. And they put that in there because they want to make sure that they're notified if there is a claim. Now, technically you have several years and we'll go over which state does how many years. I'll probably put it in the link in the description below so you can see there's about up to six years depending on the state you're in. You technically have time, but the insurance company wants to know ahead of time. Now, just because they want to know ahead of time doesn't mean they have to. And in that case, the longer that it goes out, just be mindful the insurance is looking for fraud. They're looking for what we call red flags. Oh, you got hit on the right front fender. When did this happen? Two and a half years ago. Well, we're not going to pay that. Well, you have to. I get three years. Oh, well, I guess so. We'll send an inspector out. So you may have a larger complication the further out you go, especially when they can't show proof of the damage or they can't necessarily see the damage. That's why having the police report and the photos are beneficial. That way you can go back and say, well, it wasn't ready to file a claim. I wasn't sure if I should, whatever that case is. What I personally would do is first and foremost, if you're not at fault in the claim is you can actually go towards the other person's insurance without involving yours. Now, there is a small chance that yours will get involved somehow and they'll notify them. But most of the time they don't in that other company is already responsible or the party that hits you or is at fault. They're usually responsible for the damages anyways. So they're not going to necessarily say no to you just because you call them versus your insurance company. Now, some do. That's where the headaches come in and we find out online, put them in the link description below. I find with the comments and just let us know, have you had that happen to where the company refused to work with you? They didn't want to pay you correctly, even though their person claimed fault, whatever that case is. Some of those companies are so tight on what they're paying out. They're really strict because they don't have a ton of money to pay out. And it's easier for them to say no, because you technically aren't going to know what to do next. You're going to hire a lawyer. Maybe you're going to go small claims. Most likely. Now you may involve your insurance because they'll defend you or fight for you to get that claim finished. And when they go to fight that claim, it usually goes pretty quickly. So Mark, what states are which years? I'm going to go through them pretty fast. And like I said, I'll put in the description below. So if you want to kind of skip past this, I'm also going to go over the four things that you need to know about when you're doing the claim. Even if it's a year or two years later. So let's go through the states and then I'll go over the last piece with you here real quick. The first day is one year. You have one year to file a claim according to the research from 1-800-AskGary.com. That's one of the resources. And then Reef Law Firm also had these listed on their website. So kind of taken a couple of different sources. You can go to your government website and they'll actually tell you directly. But this is what I've gotten online. So one year, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, and Tennessee. You have one year to file a claim. And if you don't file it in that year, then it's kind of null and void. Two years, you have Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Those are the two-year states. Three-year states, Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C. There's only a few four-year states, which is Florida. And that law, I believe, has changed. So look that one up. But this one says four years, Florida, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming. Five-year states is Missouri. And then six-year states, which is the end, is Maine and Minnesota. One thing I want to be very careful with is that even though you have this timeframe to file them, states like Florida have certain rules of how you can go after the other person. They used to be to where they weren't allowing you to actually recoup the lawyer fee. And so you were paying some of it. And that's what eliminated some of these people wanting to even file it. Why file it? Because I'm going to lose anyways. I've got to pay $3,000 for a lawyer. It's $2,000 worth of damage. What's the point? Well, those have changed. So understand your laws a little bit further. That kind of gets out of the realm of the insurance piece. It's more of the lawyer piece. The main things you have to think of is what is the amount of the property damage that's happening? What is necessary for you to recover in what timeframe you have? If you have missed work, you can go after, in most cases, lost wages. And then you can get that reimbursed. And lastly, doing a formal request is going to be beneficial. So if you actually request to file a claim, you don't necessarily have to actually follow through with the claim. Just keep in mind that it depends on the state you're in. If you're in a state to where you're not at fault, accidents go against you. It's not usually a major increase, but you might have a 5% to 10% increase on your insurance. That's just the way the laws have set up. In a lot of the states, it's not the case to where you have to be at fault for them to go up. But you also have to remember what happens if the car insurance claim does exceed those limits. In that case, it's usually a smart time to actually start talking with a lawyer and figuring out what are the next steps because your only actions after that, if you haven't carried enough in personal insurance for yourself, they haven't carried enough insurance to cover you or vice versa, then it really just has to be handled in court or some legal action has to be taken with the other party. I hope this was helpful, not too confusing. Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments below. If there was something I was missing or anything that you've seen with your insurance that has changed that has been different than what we're talking about. I'm Mark with Think Insurance. I'll see you in the next one.