Subrogation is a concept that's well-known among insurance and legal professionals but rarely by the policyholders they represent. Rather than leave it to the professionals, it would be to your advantage to know an overview of the process. The more knowledgeable you are about it, the more likely an insurance lawsuit will work out in your favor.

An insurance policy you have is a promise that, if something bad occurs, the business that insures the policy will make good in one way or another without unreasonable delay. If your house suffers fire damage, for example, your property insurance steps in to remunerate you or pay for the repairs, subject to state property damage laws.

But since ascertaining who is financially accountable for services or repairs is usually a heavily involved affair – and delay often increases the damage to the policyholder – insurance companies often opt to pay up front and figure out the blame afterward. They then need a path to get back the costs if, when all the facts are laid out, they weren't responsible for the payout.

For Example

You are in an auto accident. Another car collided with yours. Police are called, you exchange insurance details, and you go on your way. You have comprehensive insurance that pays for the repairs right away. Later it's determined that the other driver was entirely to blame and her insurance should have paid for the repair of your auto. How does your insurance company get its funds back?

How Does Subrogation Work?

This is where subrogation comes in. It is the process that an insurance company uses to claim reimbursement when it pays out a claim that turned out not to be its responsibility. Some companies have in-house property damage lawyers and personal injury attorneys, or a department dedicated to subrogation; others contract with a law firm. Usually, only you can sue for damages to your self or property. But under subrogation law, your insurer is considered to have some of your rights for having taken care of the damages. It can go after the money that was originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.

Why Do I Need to Know This?

For starters, if your insurance policy stipulated a deductible, your insurer wasn't the only one who had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you lost some money too – to be precise, $1,000. If your insurance company is unconcerned with pursuing subrogation even when it is entitled, it might choose to recover its costs by raising your premiums and call it a day. On the other hand, if it has a capable legal team and goes after them efficiently, it is doing you a favor as well as itself. If all of the money is recovered, you will get your full thousand-dollar deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found one-half culpable), you'll typically get half your deductible back, depending on the laws in your state.

Moreover, if the total cost of an accident is more than your maximum coverage amount, you may have had to pay the difference, which can be extremely expensive. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as criminal defense attorney near me Provo UT, successfully press a subrogation case, it will recover your losses in addition to its own.

All insurers are not the same. When shopping around, it's worth looking at the reputations of competing companies to evaluate whether they pursue winnable subrogation claims; if they do so fast; if they keep their clients advised as the case proceeds; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements immediately so that you can get your deductible back and move on with your life. If, on the other hand, an insurance company has a record of honoring claims that aren't its responsibility and then covering its profit margin by raising your premiums, you should keep looking.