Home Insurance/ Dispute with Neighbor

Patrick20

Please be kind ladies and gents I've had a stressful week. Here's the story.

My mother is disabled (some physical and mental) and I'm her carer. She owns a first floor flat in Scotland. We found out 2 weeks ago that her wet room floor hasn't been properly sealed or hasnt been maintained correctly and has been leaking water into the flat below.

The flat below has been onoccupied for 6 months plus not really sure how long exactly. I don't think the leak has been going for that length of time but who knows.

The flats previous tennant who is related to the landlord mentioned a 3 months ago when he visited the property that there was small signs of a leak. We didn't have any signs of a leak in my mothers property and were expecting the ground flats tennant or landlord to contact us so we could find the source of the water. For 3 months the property was empty, I've been at the door mutiple times when they first mentioned the leak, I don't even know the landlords name so the phonebook was out of the question. I assumed, perhaps foolishly, that with no contact for so long that they were either mistaken that maybe there wasn't a leak or that it was coming from within his property.

Fast forward to two weeks ago and I we get an angry ground flat landlord banging on our door (my first encouter with the man btw) saying that his bathroom is destroyed. He is adamant that it 100% our fault and that it is my mothers responsibilty or her insurances resposiblity. Is that correct? In the eyes of the law who's at fault here? I don't and never have owned property and never dealt with insurance before (apart from phone/travel insurance)

If it's my mother responsiblity then so be it but I want to make sure rather than being harassed and pressured by this guy into it. He has or someone on his behalf has contacted us every day and is always unpleasant (It's not like it was deliberate you know?) and my mother is scared to answer the phone now.

Also pertinent to the story is that he claims that because it took us 2 weeks to rectify the issue (from when he came knocking) then we are liable. The issue I'm having with that though is that it didn't take us 2 weeks to stop water going to his property. We got someone to find that it was a problem with the wet room floor the day he appeared. What took us 2 weeks was to get a plumber out to fix the floor. For the last 2 weeks the shower has not been in use at all.

If you made it to the end here I appreciate your time and thanks for listening.

Quentin

Your mother is only liable if she can be proved to be negligent over this

Irrespective of the liability issue either give the neighbour her insurer's details and tell him to contact them or if you want to tell him you aren't prepared to discuss it and would he stop calling and write to you instead.

You can then pass any correspondence on unanswered to the insurer to deal with

Patrick20

Quentin wrote: »

Your mother is only liable if she can be proved to be negligent over this

How would that be proved? Will the fact that they mentioned it 3 month ago be considered negligent? Or does the fact that we had neither access to their property to assess the problem and they left the property unattended for 3 months change things?

Quentin wrote: »

Irrespective of the liability issue either give the neighbour her insurer's details and tell him to contact them or if you want to tell him you aren't prepared to discuss it and would he stop calling and write to you instead.

You can then pass any correspondence on unanswered to the insurer to deal with

Thank you Quentin thats some great advice. I should have asked him to do it in writing from the start.

InsideInsurance

Patrick20 wrote: »

How would that be proved? Will the fact that they mentioned it 3 month ago be considered negligent? Or does the fact that we had neither access to their property to assess the problem and they left the property unattended for 3 months change things?

This is a possibility but your defense is the inability to get in and/ or contact anyone. If this defense works will depend on if that was probably necessary or if you could have resolved the leak element without access.

Patrick20

InsideInsurance wrote: »

This is a possibility but your defense is the inability to get in and/ or contact anyone. If this defense works will depend on if that was probably necessary or if you could have resolved the leak element without access.

Hmm well we did fix it without access so perhaps my mother is liable. Just to clarify though, although a leak was mentioned months ago, I'm perplexed at why it took them 3 months to mention there was still a leak. Access wasn't necessary to fix the leak but no contact meant that we were unable to find if the measures we took were sucessful or not. It could theoretically still be leaking for all I know as we can't monitor the situation. Surely if we are liable it should pe atleast only partly responsible?

Thanks for the help btw, really appreciate it, I'm lost at the moment.

Voyager2002

Patrick20 wrote: »

Hmm well we did fix it without access so perhaps my mother is liable. Just to clarify though, although a leak was mentioned months ago, I'm perplexed at why it took them 3 months to mention there was still a leak. Access wasn't necessary to fix the leak but no contact meant that we were unable to find if the measures we took were sucessful or not. It could theoretically still be leaking for all I know as we can't monitor the situation. Surely if we are liable it should pe atleast only partly responsible?

Thanks for the help btw, really appreciate it, I'm lost at the moment.

Best if you allow your mother's insurers to worry about this. And check if her insurance policy includes something like a legal advice telephone line, since many do.

Patrick20

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Best if you allow your mother's insurers to worry about this. And check if her insurance policy includes something like a legal advice telephone line, since many do.

I'll check if they have a legal helpline that would be so helpful. So should I be contacting my mothers insurance (She can't handle it anymore) on her behalf and make sure they have all the information? Should I send the information in writing aswell? Will it just be a case the insurers dealing with each other to find out which one of them has to pay out? Sorry for all the questions but I'm not kidding when I say I don't have a clue. I have no clue what procedures to follow or whether I'm going to miss something important. Thanks for helping.

Quentin

Yes, assuming her policy has cover for personal liability then if she is liable the insurance will pay (up to any limit set out in the policy).



Tell her not to worry, and tell the neighbour to make their claim in writing and you will pass it on to the insurer. The downstairs landlord will know the ropes, so might be worth waiting to see whether or not he pursues this in writing before taking further action.

InsideInsurance

Quentin wrote: »

Yes, assuming her policy has cover for personal liability then if she is liable the insurance will pay (up to any limit set out in the policy).

Its normally badged as "Property Owners Liability" or something similar as its the TP liability section associated to the Buildings cover. Personal Liability is the TP section associated to the Contents and covers things like you causing damage whilst cycling or if you give first aid and the numnut sues you for injuring them etc.

Patrick20 wrote: »

Hmm well we did fix it without access so perhaps my mother is liable. Just to clarify though, although a leak was mentioned months ago, I'm perplexed at why it took them 3 months to mention there was still a leak. Access wasn't necessary to fix the leak but no contact meant that we were unable to find if the measures we took were sucessful or not. It could theoretically still be leaking for all I know as we can't monitor the situation. Surely if we are liable it should pe atleast only partly responsible?

How soon after did you fix it?

The liability and the courts work on the grounds of "reasonableness". Was your course of action reasonable or not? Did you act in a reasonable time frame? Was it reasonable to assume all was ok after doing a fix and hearing nothing else about it? etc etc

Patrick20

Thanks for the assistance everyone, You will never know how much you helped me here, I was completely lost.

Turns out she pays for the top level of cover from her insurer so she has personal liability insurance, that has taken a weight off both our minds.

I'll just read the rest of this policy booklet noting down the pertinent information and then I'll let the insurance deal with the neighbour.

As an aside, my mothers flat is worth in the region of £60,000 and yet the buildings cover is up to £1,000,000 and contents insurance is £50,000 (she definately doesn't own anywhere near that). Is this normal?

InsideInsurance

Patrick20 wrote: »

As an aside, my mothers flat is worth in the region of £60,000 and yet the buildings cover is up to £1,000,000 and contents insurance is £50,000 (she definately doesn't own anywhere near that). Is this normal?

Home Insurance comes in two flavours, first is sums insured where the customer declares exact values and the insurer rates on this basis. The second is blanket/ (bed)room rated where the insurer offers a set fairly high limit and instead rates on the basis or the number of rooms or bedrooms in the property on the basis that with a combination of location, room count, property type and construction type they can fairly easily ballpark the actual building cost.

There are some that actually provide "unlimited" cover with just inner limits for valuables and single items.

Both classes of insurance are viable and whilst for some of us one type normally will be better the majority it'll simply come down to the insurers in question and they may switch each year or two between the two methodologies.

Ultimately, calculate the correct values for both and at renewal do quotes using accurate values and you may find a sums insured is best this year or may find blanket cover is most competitive.