Definition of an unoccupied house

headingtonboy

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone can give me some advice. My mum lives on her own in her house (which she owns herself) with both Building and Contents insurance from the Halifax.

Unfortunately she had to go into hospital about a month ago, and the outlook is that she will probably be in there for at least another couple of months.

I checked her insurance policy and it states that the home will be deemed unoccupied if the following is true:

"When your home has not been lived in, or intended to be lived in, for more than 60 consecutive days".

I realise that if the home is deemed to be unoccupied then this would affect any claim we/she made on the insurance.

At the moment myself and my brother are going down to visit her in hospital at weekends and are staying in the house overnight when we do.

So would this mean that the house would not be considered unoccupied ? I am loathed to phone the Halifax about it as I know that even by enquiring about it they can flag something up against her policy.

Any advice most welcome,

Cheers,

Dave

VictorM_2

Does it say who has to be living there, it might say "you or your family" which may include you.
Also occasionally staying at the house does not mean it is occupied, but would depend on the individual policy wording.

Dangermac

VictorM wrote: »

Does it say who has to be living there, it might say "you or your family" which may include you.
Also occasionally staying at the house does not mean it is occupied, but would depend on the individual policy wording.

Good answer.

I would advise the OP to be very careful regarding this point. I have seen insurers try and throw out a claim for a very similar type of incident/circumstance.

Read the policy wording very carefully. I would recommend speaking to insurers. There is also some FOS precedents which relate to unoccupied houses, and what they feel insurers should do.

The 60 day thing can be a real banana skin, depending on who exactly is visiting the house. Often, periodic visits arent enough from a policy perspective.

DM

VictorM_2

I know companies I have worked for in the past would not classify occasional sleep overs to mean "occupied".

There is normally a lot of leeway when it comes to serious illness, however I would agree with the previous poster and say that the insurer should be called. Houses left unoccupied are a massive risk and you need to make sure you're covered

System

My mother's house was unoccupied for 3 months after she moved in with us and we sold the house.
I checked with Aviva and they said it needed to be visited once a week, and the garden kept tidy. We didn't strictly adhere to that ourselves, but a good neighbour kept an eye on things. We hired a gardener to do mowing etc every few weeks.