The Things You Need to Know About Subrogation

Subrogation is a concept that's well-known in insurance and legal circles but sometimes not by the people they represent. Rather than leave it to the professionals, it is to your advantage to comprehend an overview of how it works. The more you know, the better decisions you can make about your insurance company.

Every insurance policy you have is a commitment that, if something bad happens to you, the company on the other end of the policy will make good in one way or another in a timely manner. If your vehicle is in a fender-bender, insurance adjusters (and police, when necessary) decide who was to blame and that party's insurance covers the damages.

But since determining who is financially accountable for services or repairs is often a heavily involved affair – and time spent waiting in some cases compounds the damage to the victim – insurance firms often opt to pay up front and assign blame after the fact. They then need a way to regain the costs if, when there is time to look at all the facts, they weren't actually in charge of the expense.

Let's Look at an Example

You go to the doctor's office with a gouged finger. You give the nurse your health insurance card and he records your policy details. You get stitches and your insurance company gets an invoice for the medical care. But the next afternoon, when you get to your workplace – where the accident occurred – your boss hands you workers compensation paperwork to fill out. Your workers comp policy is in fact responsible for the costs, not your health insurance policy. It has a vested interest in getting that money back in some way.

How Subrogation Works

This is where subrogation comes in. It is the method that an insurance company uses to claim reimbursement when it pays out a claim that turned out not to be its responsibility. 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 to your self or property. But under subrogation law, your insurance company 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.

How Does This Affect Individuals?

For starters, if you have a deductible, your insurance company 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 insurer is unconcerned with pursuing subrogation even when it is entitled, it might choose to get back its losses by ballooning your premiums. On the other hand, if it has a knowledgeable 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 thousand-dollar deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found 50 percent responsible), you'll typically get half your deductible back, based on the laws in most states.

Moreover, if the total expense 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 immigration attorney Herriman UT, pursue subrogation and succeeds, it will recover your costs in addition to its own.

All insurance companies are not created equal. When comparing, it's worth comparing the reputations of competing firms to determine whether they pursue winnable subrogation claims; if they do so fast; if they keep their policyholders informed as the case continues; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements right away so that you can get your money back and move on with your life. If, instead, an insurer has a record of paying out claims that aren't its responsibility and then protecting its income by raising your premiums, even attractive rates won't outweigh the eventual headache.