Subrogation is an idea that's understood among legal and insurance professionals but often not by the customers they represent. Even if you've never heard the word before, it would be to your advantage to know the steps of the process. The more knowledgeable you are, the more likely relevant proceedings will work out favorably.

Every insurance policy you hold is an assurance that, if something bad occurs, the insurer of the policy will make good in one way or another without unreasonable delay. If you get hurt while working, for example, your company's workers compensation insurance picks up the tab for medical services. Employment lawyers handle the details; you just get fixed up.

But since ascertaining who is financially responsible for services or repairs is often a time-consuming affair – and time spent waiting sometimes adds to the damage to the policyholder – insurance companies usually opt to pay up front and assign blame afterward. They then need a mechanism to recover the costs if, when all the facts are laid out, they weren't in charge of the payout.

Let's Look at an Example

Your bedroom catches fire and causes $10,000 in house damages. Happily, you have property insurance and it takes care of the repair expenses. However, in its investigation it finds out that an electrician had installed some faulty wiring, and there is a decent chance that a judge would find him accountable for the loss. The home has already been fixed up in the name of expediency, but your insurance agency is out all that money. What does the agency do next?

How Subrogation Works

This is where subrogation comes in. It is the way that an insurance company uses to claim reimbursement 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. Usually, only you can sue for damages done to your person or property. But under subrogation law, your insurer is considered to have some of your rights for making good on 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 a start, if you have a deductible, your insurer wasn't the only one who had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you have a stake in the outcome as well – to be precise, $1,000. If your insurance company is timid on any subrogation case it might not win, it might opt to recover its losses by increasing your premiums and call it a day. On the other hand, if it has a competent legal team and pursues them aggressively, it is doing you a favor as well as itself. If all $10,000 is recovered, you will get your full 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, based on the laws in most states.

Furthermore, if the total cost of an accident is more than your maximum coverage amount, you could be in for a stiff bill. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as workers comp lawyer Milton, ga, pursue subrogation and succeeds, it will recover your costs as well as its own.

All insurance agencies are not the same. When shopping around, it's worth measuring the records of competing agencies to determine if they pursue valid subrogation claims; if they resolve those claims quickly; if they keep their customers informed as the case proceeds; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements quickly so that you can get your deductible back and move on with your life. If, on the other hand, an insurance agency has a record of honoring claims that aren't its responsibility and then safeguarding its profitability by raising your premiums, even attractive rates won't outweigh the eventual headache.