Subrogation is a concept that's understood among insurance and legal firms but rarely by the people they represent. Rather than leave it to the professionals, it would be to your advantage to understand an overview of how it works. The more knowledgeable you are, the better decisions you can make with regard to your insurance company.
An insurance policy you own is a promise that, if something bad happens to you, the insurer of the policy will make good in one way or another in a timely fashion. If you get an injury at work, for example, your company's workers compensation insurance pays out for medical services. Employment lawyers handle the details; you just get fixed up.
But since determining who is financially responsible for services or repairs is sometimes a heavily involved affair – and delay in some cases compounds the damage to the victim – insurance firms in many cases decide to pay up front and figure out the blame later. They then need a way to recover the costs if, when all is said and done, they weren't actually in charge of the expense.
For Example
You are in a vehicle accident. Another car collided with yours. Police are called, you exchange insurance information, 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 to blame and his insurance should have paid for the repair of your vehicle. How does your insurance company get its money back?
How Does Subrogation Work?
This is where subrogation comes in. It is the way that an insurance company uses to claim payment after it has paid for something that should have been paid by some other entity. Some insurance firms have in-house property damage lawyers and personal injury attorneys, or a department dedicated to subrogation; others contract with a law firm. Under ordinary circumstances, only you can sue for damages done to your person or property. But under subrogation law, your insurer is given some of your rights for having taken care of the damages. It can go after the money originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.
Why Do I Need to Know This?
For starters, if you have a deductible, it wasn't just your insurer that 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 timid on any subrogation case it might not win, it might choose to recoup its expenses by upping your premiums and call it a day. On the other hand, if it has a capable legal team and goes after those cases enthusiastically, it is acting both in its own interests and in yours. If all ten grand 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 $500 back, depending on your state laws.
Furthermore, if the total cost of an accident is over your maximum coverage amount, you could be in for a stiff bill. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as auto accident mableton ga, successfully press a subrogation case, it will recover your losses in addition to its own.
All insurers are not the same. When comparing, it's worth looking at the reputations of competing firms to determine if they pursue legitimate subrogation claims; if they do so quickly; if they keep their customers advised as the case continues; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements right away so that you can get your funding back and move on with your life. If, on the other hand, an insurer has a reputation of paying out claims that aren't its responsibility and then covering its bottom line by raising your premiums, you should keep looking.