Maria Aviles: Oftentimes when growing a family, couples build additions onto their homes, renovate, or build a new home. One of the most overlooked details in the process is being aware of what should be in your home owner's policy.
Dana Mochel Shivalier: Home owner's insurance not only covers the home. It also covers your personal property. It covers it anywhere in the world. If your home becomes uninhabitable due to a covered loss, such as a fire, and you need temporary residence, under the policy, there is additional living expense up to 24 months. There is also coverage for liability and medical coverage.
Maria Aviles: Dana, a lot of families will be adding square footage to their home as their families grow, possibly to have a nursery, a rec room, or a playroom. Would they need to contact their agent to increase their coverage in a case like that?
Dana Mochel Shivalier: Well, the policy will provide coverage for that addition. However, again, you will want to contact the agent so they can assist you with possibly increasing the coverage to your home. You may not be properly insured or may not have enough coverage by adding that room to your home. Again, the policy will pay for that room. However, you want to increase the coverage to make sure you're properly insured.
Maria Aviles: Dana, what are some things that aren't covered under a basic home owner's policy?
Dana Mochel Shivalier: My best advice in determining or understanding what's not covered under your policy is to take the time to review it with your agent to get a clear understanding of what the policy specifically excludes.
Maria Aviles: You know, every once in a while, we go to the mailbox, and we get those letters from our agent asking us to give them a call to kind of discuss our coverage. Are those really ploys to just get our costs to go up, or are you really just contacting us to help us out?
Dana Mochel Shivalier: Unfortunately, that may be the common belief. But to meet with your agent every so often is great to truly understand what you have. The meeting between the agent and the policyholder is an opportunity for the agent to learn about life events that have occurred in your life.
John Hurst: I met Cheryl in 1994.
Dana Mochel Shivalier: He was referred to me by another client of mine, and he wanted to insure his automobile.
John Hurst: I am buying a real car. I probably need some real insurance, this time. I walked over to -- I walked across Peachtree Street into Cheryl's office, and we've known each other ever since.
Dana Mochel Shivalier: And I mentioned to him, "Let's take care of your auto insurance. But what about your renter's insurance too?"
John Hurst: Tara and I got engaged and started talking about families.
Dana Mochel Shivalier: The first thing they want to is insure a ring, so the first thing we did is, we insured an engagement ring for John and for his fiancée at the time, Tara.
John Hurst: And then we built this house.
Dana Mochel Shivalier: Of course, just like most families, they get married and have the home, then the next thing that comes along is their children. As far as just, once again, looking at the whole package of their insurance, like I try to do, and verify that as things change in their life, we write the proper policies for them.
John Hurst: Tara and I, we like nice things, and before we had kids, this was a very adult house. I mean, everything was breakable.
Tara Hurst: We have a lot of Christopher Radko ornaments and Hallmark Christmas ornaments.
John Hurst: We've got some paintings in this house that are rather expensive.
Dana Mochel Shivalier: If a painting were in your home and a storm were to occur and a tree smashes down through it and ruins your painting, there is coverage for that. But if you have children, which they now do and lots of children are over and playing, and somebody puts their finger paints right on that painting and, now this $3,000 painting is worth nothing, it's not covered unless we put that on that scheduled policy.
So it's something that you should, address with your insurance agent to make sure you take care of that if you want it to be covered. There is a few things that people can really do to help protect their homes.
First, you want to protect your family, so you should always check the batteries in your smoke detector. You should change hoses to your washing machine. It's really important to take pictures of everything that they own in their home. When you're going out of town, of course, you want to leave lights on, you don't want anybody to break into your home. Have different lights go on. Let neighbors know. Stop your newspapers. When it's cold, you should always leave the heat on in your home. Don't be afraid to call your insurance agent. All of us are here to help you. All of us here want to make sure that, if you have a loss, that we've written the right policy for you to take care of that loss.
