Insurance took 8 months to pay to fix a wall and now city hall fined us 8000$

[Lucaswesley488]

Hey guys, this might be a long read but I would really appreciate some advice. I am in the state of Connecticut.

So around March, some lady hit my house with her car, ran right through the brick wall. I was away at college when this happened and my mom was not living there at the time. Fast forward around June, I come back, and the house was not fixed yet. A contractor patched up the car-sized hole with wooden support but all the debris was left in a pile outside. My mom gave me the job to get money from the insurance company to fix the wall, and here is where things get irritating. The lady had esurance, and the person handling my case never return my calls or emails. It would always be me calling them, them telling me what to do, like get a contractor for an estimate or something, and when I give them the information, they won't respond until I call them again. I think I have spoken to the lady handling my case once, and I have called over a dozen times, she seems to never be there or taking a vacation and they would always tell me they will leave a message. I found out that was what they were doing to my mom, never returning emails or calls, and my mom is not fluent in english. I also found out that the contractor who patched up my wall have been trying to contact them too and getting no response. I called them out several times about it and they said it was because we were not "proactive" enough. Now to be fair, I was not calling them every other day but I did not think I needed to. Anyways, in November we finally got paid, but my mom claims it's not enough to fix the house, but the problem now is that because there were debris piles outside our house(kind of in the sidewalk) we were getting fined a city violation, and over the span of 4 months, it accumulated to $7800. Now my mom wants me to call esurance, and say because it took them so long to pay us, its their fault and they have to pay the fine too. Any advice?

 

[adjusterjack]

Advice? Sorry, but esurance is not going to pay your fines because they are not legally obligated to do so.

The delay in repairs wasn't caused by esurance not paying.

You and/or your mother should have made the claim on your homeowners policy as soon as it became apparent that the other company wasn't cooperating. You'd have had the house repaired pretty quick (probably within a few weeks after the accident) and your insurance company would have gone after the driver for reimbursement.

I have no idea what sort of justification you have for not using your own insurance.

From where I sit it was just a bad and costly move.

 

[Lucaswesley488]

I asked my mother and she told me we did not have homeowner's insurance at the time and that we own the property.

 

[Taxing Matters]

I asked my mother and she told me we did not have homeowner's insurance at the time and that we own the property.

If you own a home you really want to have homeowner's insurance to help protect your investment. When incidents like this happen, it's the homeowner's responsibility to fix the property to meet whatever the local code requirements are, in this case getting rid of debris instead of letting it sit. You either do that by getting the money from your own homeowner's insurance or pay it out of pocket while pursuing the driver (and her insurance company) for the money. What the driver is obligated to pay for is the damage done to the property. She is not liable to pay for the fines that were incurred for the code violations. And since the driver is not liable for your failure to meet the code then neither is her insurance company.