CLAIMS: CONTRACTORS AND THE DEDUCTIBLE

Can a roofer waive or pay your insurance deductible? What 15 state statutes say

A roofer cannot lawfully pay, waive, absorb or rebate your deductible in Texas, where doing it without the insurer's consent is a Class B misdemeanor with a fine up to $2,000 and up to 180 days in jail, or in Florida, where doing it with intent to defraud is a third-degree felony. Thirteen more states in the table below bar the offer, the promise or the payment in their own words, and Texas also puts a duty on the insured to pay the deductible.

Disclaimer: Published averages and benchmark ranges, not a quote. This page is general information about statutes, not legal advice or insurance advice, and it does not tell anyone how to handle a particular claim. Your premium will differ based on your home, location, claims history, and insurer. Flood insurance is separate from a standard homeowners policy.

The arithmetic explains why legislatures bothered. Take a roof that honestly costs $14,400 to replace, under a policy with a $2,500 deductible. The insurer owes $11,900. A contractor who promises to cover the deductible has only two ways to be paid in full: write $16,900 on the invoice so that the insurer's $14,400 check equals the real price, or accept $11,900 in total while the invoice still reads $14,400. Either way the insurer pays $2,500 more than the policy requires, and the homeowner is holding a document that says something that is not true. State law turns that into a licensing offense, a fraud charge, a void contract or an estimate the insurer may ignore, depending on where the roof is.

The deductible is the owner's slice of the loss, and the policy says so

Start with the contract that a waiver quietly rewrites. The ISO Homeowners 3 sample form (HO 00 03 10 00, the 1999 edition published by the Insurance Information Institute) puts the deductible in one sentence: "Subject to the policy limits that apply, we will pay only that part of the total of all loss payable under Section I that exceeds the deductible amount shown in the Declarations." The deductible is not a charge the roofer adds, so it is not the roofer's to discount. It is the first slice of the loss that the policy assigns to the owner.

The loss settlement condition supplies the second half. For a building settled at replacement cost, the sample says the insurer will pay "the cost to repair or replace, after application of any deductible and without deduction for depreciation," but not more than the least of three amounts, and the third is "the necessary amount actually spent to repair or replace the damaged building." The form does not mention waivers, so what follows is an interpretation and not a quotation: if the owner's real outlay on the roof is less than the invoice, because the contractor quietly took less, the cap that measures "actually spent" is where the paper and the transaction part company. Your own policy's wording controls, and later ISO editions and individual insurers' forms differ from this sample.

Roof claims make the point sharper than most, because many are settled in two payments. The first check is the actual cash value, the replacement price less depreciation and less the deductible. The second releases the withheld depreciation once the work is done and invoiced. Our recoverable depreciation guide walks through that sequence. A deductible dispute therefore tends to surface at the second payment, when the insurer asks what the final invoice says and what was paid against it.

Texas: a duty on the owner, an offense for the seller, and a proof rule

Texas built the most complete scheme of the 15 states in the table, in four separate provisions that fit together. The first sits in the Insurance Code. Section 707.002 reads in full: "A person insured under a property insurance policy shall pay any deductible applicable to a first-party claim made under the policy." The duty belongs to the insured, in plain words, and the rest of chapter 707 supports it.

The second is the seller's offense. Business and Commerce Code section 27.02 applies to anyone selling goods or services expected to be paid wholly or partly from a property insurance claim, not just roofers, so a water restoration company or a fence builder is covered too. Subsection (c) creates the offense in two forms. In the first, the seller advertises or promises that it will, "without the insurer's consent," do one of three things: "pay, waive, absorb, or otherwise decline to charge or collect the amount of the insured's deductible"; "provide a rebate or credit in connection with the sale of the good or service that will offset all or part of the amount paid by the insured as a deductible"; or "in any other manner assist the insured in avoiding monetary payment of the required insurance deductible." In the second form the seller actually does it, knowing the insured will pay with claim proceeds. Subsection (d) makes either form a Class B misdemeanor, and Penal Code section 12.22 sets that at a fine not to exceed $2,000, confinement not to exceed 180 days, or both. The phrase "without the insurer's consent" is part of the offense as written, so the text itself contemplates a case where the insurer agrees, and the statute does not say what such consent looks like.

Subsection (b) is a notice requirement aimed at the owner's benefit. A contract with a price of $1,000 or more that is reasonably expected to be paid from a property claim must carry, in at least 12-point boldface, a statement that Texas law requires an insured person to pay any applicable deductible and that a seller who knowingly allows the insured to fail to pay, or assists the failure, violates Texas law. The Texas Department of Insurance repeats the point on its roofing consumer page (last updated March 24, 2025): it is illegal in Texas for a contractor to offer to waive, rebate or absorb a policyholder's deductible, and insurers may ask the policyholder for proof it was paid.

That proof is the fourth provision. Section 707.004 lets an insurer with replacement cost coverage "refuse to pay a claim for withheld recoverable depreciation or a replacement cost holdback" until it receives "reasonable proof of payment by the policyholder of any deductible applicable to the claim." The statute defines the proof as including "a canceled check, money order receipt, credit card statement, or copy of an executed installment plan contract or other financing arrangement that requires full payment of the deductible over time." In dollars, on the worked roof below, the depreciation held back is $4,320 on the honest and silent-discount invoices and $5,070 on the padded one. A homeowner who cannot show the $2,500 was paid is, under this statute, exposed to the insurer holding back the depreciation, which is the larger sum.

One more Texas rule matters because roofers often hand out claim help. Insurance Code section 4102.163 bars a contractor from acting as a public adjuster, or advertising to adjust claims, on any property for which it is providing or may provide contracting services, whether or not it holds an adjuster's license and whether or not the owner signs a power of attorney. A contractor who talks about the deductible and the claim in the same pitch is working on both prohibitions at once.

Florida: three statutes, each aimed at a different person

Florida spreads the rule across three chapters, and reading them together shows a deliberate division of labor. Section 489.147, in the contracting chapter, regulates the roofer's marketing and contract. A "prohibited advertisement" is any communication encouraging a consumer to contact a contractor or public adjuster to make a roof damage claim that does not state, in type of at least 12 points and at least half the size of the largest type used, that the consumer is responsible for paying any insurance deductible and that it is felony insurance fraud for a contractor to knowingly or willfully, and with intent to injure, defraud or deceive, pay, waive or rebate all or part of the deductible. Subsection (2)(b) bars offering a residential owner "a rebate, gift, gift card, cash, coupon, waiver of any insurance deductible, or any other thing of value" in exchange for being allowed to inspect the roof or for making a roof claim. Subsection (3) sends violators to discipline under section 489.129 and allows a fine of up to $10,000 per violation, and (4)(a) treats the acts of compensated solicitors as the contractor's own.

Two owner-facing details sit in the same section. A roof contract that lacks the notice that the contractor may not engage in the (2)(b) practices can be voided by the owner within 10 days of signing. And every roof repair or replacement contract must carry, in bold type of at least 14 points on the signature page, language advising the owner that if the work relates to an insurance claim they should contact their insurance company to verify coverage, including claims, deductibles and policy terms, before signing.

The criminal rule is elsewhere. Section 817.234(7)(d), in the insurance-fraud statute, says a contractor or a person acting for one "may not knowingly or willfully and with intent to injure, defraud, or deceive, pay, waive, or rebate all or part of an insurance deductible applicable to payment to the contractor," for repairs to property covered by a property insurance policy, and that a violator commits a third-degree felony. The intent words matter. A contractor who forgets to collect a balance has not necessarily violated the paragraph, and one who plans from the start to bill the insurer for an amount nobody will pay has.

The third statute reaches the person homeowners often hire next. Section 626.854(23) lists acts that public adjusters, apprentices and people acting for them may not commit, among them offering a residential owner a rebate, gift, cash, coupon or "waiver of any insurance deductible" in exchange for a roof inspection or a roof claim, and receiving a referral reward for roof work paid from insurance. The fine can reach $10,000 per act, or $20,000 per act during a declared state of emergency. Elsewhere the same section says insurance claim payments "do not include policy deductibles, and public adjuster compensation may not be based on the deductible portion of a claim." Our public adjuster fee caps guide covers the fee tiers.

Florida's roof matching and replacement-versus-repair rules are a separate subject, covered in our guide to roof repair and replacement decisions, and are not repeated here.

The statute table: fifteen states, as of November 3, 2026

Every row comes from the text on the state legislature's own site, and each row follows the full section. A state that is not listed is outside the table, not cleared by it. The first table sets out who is bound and what is barred; the second, what happens to the person who breaks the rule.

Criminal penalties are written into the statutes of Maryland, Texas, Florida, South Carolina and West Virginia, and the other states rely on civil remedies, licensing or voided contracts. The thinnest sections are Utah's, which states the bar and nothing else, and Nebraska's, which states a prohibition with no penalty. A thin section does not mean no consequence: the same act can also fall under a state's general consumer-protection or insurance-fraud law that this table does not cover.

What the verbs and the definitions change

Three drafting choices separate the 15 statutes, and they matter more than the headline penalties.

Promise or payment. Most of the states bar the advertisement or the promise, and nine tie it to winning the job: the contractor may not promise or offer the deductible "as an inducement" or "as an incentive" to a sale (Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Utah, Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia). Colorado and South Dakota bar the advertisement or promise without that phrase. Those provisions are triggered by the pitch. Colorado adds "waive," Arizona adds "issue payment for," and Texas, Florida and Maryland name the act itself: pay, waive, rebate, absorb, compensate. A contractor who makes no advertisement and simply forgives the balance after the work is more clearly inside the second group of statutes than the first. Whether an inducement statute also reaches a quiet waiver is a question that turns on how a court reads "inducement," and the statutory text does not answer it.

Discounts as rebates. Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, South Carolina and West Virginia go further and define the promise to include a discount. Missouri's definition reads "granting any allowance or offering any discount against the fees to be charged or paying the insured or any person directly or indirectly associated with the property any form of compensation, gift, prize, bonus, coupon, credit, referral fee, or other item of monetary value for any reason," with no exception for small items. Nebraska and Iowa carve out "items of nominal value." South Carolina's definition names a discount "in return for displaying a sign or other advertisement at the insured's premises" as a rebate, while Iowa goes the other way and allows a contractor to display a sign if the owner "receives no compensation" for it. A yard-sign deal that is allowed in one state is a rebate in the next.

Intent. Florida's felony and Maryland's fraudulent act both require intent to injure, defraud or deceive an insurer. Texas section 27.02 requires knowledge that the insured will pay with claim proceeds, not intent to defraud, and builds in an exception for the insurer's consent. Most of the others have no intent element in their text. For an owner this is the practical distinction between a statute that punishes the arrangement and one that punishes the deception.

Thresholds and scope also vary. Colorado ignores contracts at $1,000 or less. Texas applies the notice requirement at $1,000. Arizona reaches only repairs after an insurer-designated catastrophic storm, and Iowa only repairs after a catastrophe, which its definition ties to fire, earthquake, tornado, windstorm, flood or hailstorm. Missouri and Oklahoma reach commercial roofing as well as residential, while Wisconsin and Nebraska limit themselves to residential property.

A $14,400 roof billed three ways

The inputs below are stated assumptions, not quotes. A homeowner has a hail-damaged roof that a contractor will replace for $14,400, the honest price of the real work. The policy settles the roof at replacement cost, with 30 percent of the replacement price withheld as recoverable depreciation until the work is done, and carries a flat $2,500 deductible. The insurer's adjuster accepts the invoice as the scope and price of the loss in each case.

Case A is the honest invoice. The contract is $14,400 and the homeowner pays the deductible. The insurer's payment is $14,400 less $2,500, which is $11,900, in two checks: withheld depreciation is 30 percent of $14,400, or $4,320, so the first check is $14,400 minus $4,320 minus $2,500, or $7,580, and the second is $4,320. The homeowner pays $2,500 and the contractor receives $14,400 in all.

Case B is the padded invoice. The contractor promises the owner will pay nothing, and writes $16,900 on the invoice, the real $14,400 plus the $2,500 deductible. The insurer pays $16,900 less $2,500, which is $14,400, so the owner pays nothing and the contractor still receives its real price. The depreciation holdback is 30 percent of $16,900, or $5,070, so the first check is $16,900 minus $5,070 minus $2,500, or $9,330, and the second is $5,070. Against Case A, the insurer paid $14,400 minus $11,900, or $2,500 more than the honest loss required. The invoice overstates the price by exactly the amount the owner did not pay.

Case C is the silent discount. The invoice reads $14,400, the true price, and looks perfectly ordinary. But the contractor privately agrees to take $11,900 in total and collect nothing from the owner. The insurer pays $14,400 minus $2,500, or $11,900, the same check as in Case A. The owner pays nothing and the contractor gives up $2,500 of its price. Now apply the deductible provision to the price the owner actually agreed: $11,900 less $2,500 is $9,400, which is what the insurer would pay on that price. Measured against the real price, the insurer has again paid $2,500 more than the deductible provision calls for. The invoice overstates the agreed price by exactly $2,500, the same overstatement as in Case B, reached by a side agreement instead of a larger number. What is wrong with the invoice is not a number but a missing fact, namely that the deductible was never going to be collected.

Checked by hand: in A, $14,400 less $2,500 is $11,900; 30 percent of $14,400 is $4,320 ($14,000 x 0.3 = $4,200, plus $400 x 0.3 = $120); $14,400 less $4,320 is $10,080, less $2,500 is $7,580. In B, $16,900 less $2,500 is $14,400, and $14,400 less $11,900 is the $2,500 overpayment; 30 percent of $16,900 is $5,070; $16,900 less $5,070 is $11,830, less $2,500 is $9,330. In C, the real price of $11,900 less the $2,500 deductible is $9,400, and the insurer's actual payment of $11,900 exceeds it by $2,500. In B and in C the $2,500 the owner did not pay comes back as a $2,500 insurer overpayment measured against the real price.

The Texas proof-of-payment rule bites hardest in Case B. The holdback is $5,070 there, and the owner cannot show a deductible payment because none was made, so section 707.004 lets the insurer decline to release it until reasonable proof arrives. The statute's list of acceptable proof includes a financing arrangement or installment plan that requires full payment of the deductible over time, which is the difference between a legitimate payment arrangement and a waiver: the first still has the owner paying every dollar.

Where a padded amount lands on the Texas fraud ladder

The deductible statutes are not the only exposure. Texas Penal Code section 35.02 makes it an offense, with intent to defraud or deceive an insurer, to prepare or present a statement in support of a claim that the person knows contains false or misleading material information, and, in subsection (b), to solicit, offer, pay or receive "a benefit in connection with the furnishing of goods or services for which a claim for payment is submitted." Subsection (c) grades the offense by the value of the claim, and section 35.025(c) says that when the actor proves by a preponderance of the evidence that part of the claim resulted from a valid covered loss, the value of the claim "is equal to the difference between the total claim amount and the amount of the valid portion of the claim." On a padded invoice the valid portion is the real price, so the value is the pad. That is the statute's mapping, shown below with deductibles from $500 to the 2 percent wind and hail level on a $300,000 dwelling, not a prediction of any prosecution.

A flat $2,500 deductible falls at the floor of the state jail felony band, which starts at $2,500. If the actor cannot prove the valid portion, the value is not the difference but the claim as presented, and a $16,900 roof claim sits in that same band. Section 35.03 adds a rule for repeated claims: three or more claims communicated under one scheme can be treated as one offense one category higher. Maryland's schedule is simpler: an act with a value of $300 or more under the fraud subtitle is a felony under 27-408, with a fine of up to $10,000 and up to 15 years for a violation of 27-407.2. Florida's felony under 817.234(7)(d) is third-degree by its own terms, and the value brackets in 817.234(11) rise to second and first degree at $20,000 and $100,000 of property involved. Our percentage deductible guide explains why a 1 or 2 percent figure can run to several thousand dollars.

Contractor, owner, adjuster: who answers for what

The statutes assign blame unevenly, and the table that follows is a map of statutory text, not of how any case would come out.

The last row is easy to overlook and has its own logic. A contractor who is both pricing the roof and speaking for the owner on the claim controls both ends of the invoice and the negotiation over it. Several states cut that tie by barring contractors from adjusting at all, though most still let them discuss the scope of repairs. Wisconsin's text, for example, allows a contractor, with the insured's express consent, to discuss damage with the insurer's representative and to submit an estimate. The owner who wants someone to argue the claim must look to a licensed public adjuster, whose fee rules are in our fee caps guide, or to a lawyer.

What the policy does to an insured who signs the wrong paper

Apart from any statute, the policy has its own response. In the HO-3 sample, Section I Condition Q reads: "We provide coverage to no 'insureds' under this policy if, whether before or after a loss, an 'insured' has: 1. Intentionally concealed or misrepresented any material fact or circumstance; 2. Engaged in fraudulent conduct; or 3. Made false statements; relating to this insurance." The clause is about the person, not the roof, and its trigger is intent, so a clerical error is not the same as a deliberate misstatement. But the sample's remedy is blunt: read literally, the insurer provides coverage to no insureds. On the worked claim, what is exposed is not the $2,500 in dispute but the claim itself, a $14,400 roof, and the claim also enters the owner's claims-history report, a subject covered with what an insurer may do after a claim.

The sample also requires, after a loss, a sworn proof of loss on request within 60 days, setting out the time and cause of loss and other facts, and requires the insured to "keep an accurate record of repair expenses." A sworn document is a different level of exposure than a casual email, and a roofing invoice is often the evidence behind it. That is also the point of Florida's required contract notice, which tells the owner to call the insurer before signing. When a claim is denied or reduced, the route is the one described in our claim denial appeal guide, and a dispute that is only about the price of the work can go to appraisal under the clause described in our appraisal guide.

What a roofing contract and estimate should already say

Because the deductible rule is meant to be visible to the owner, many of these states require specific text on the paper the owner signs or receives. The table lists what the sections require, so that an owner can check a contract against it.

None of those provisions is a substitute for reading the policy. They do give a first test of whether a roofer is following the local rules: a contractor who has not handed over the notice the state requires has already told the owner something about how the rest of the job may go. Our claim filing guide covers the steps with the insurer that come before any contract is signed, and the guide on whether to file a small claim covers the case where the repair costs little more than the deductible.

Paying the deductible when the money is short

The statutes do not forbid an owner from having trouble finding $2,500. Texas section 707.004 names an executed installment plan or other financing arrangement that "requires full payment of the deductible over time" as acceptable proof of payment, and no other state in the table says anything contrary or anything equivalent. The legal difference between the lawful arrangement and the waiver is that the owner still owes every dollar. What a state treats as a "discount" or "rebate" in an installment arrangement, such as a reduced total in exchange for the claim, is beyond what the statutes answer, and the Missouri and South Carolina definitions show how wide the word can run.

The deductible also decides whether a claim is worth filing at all. On a $14,400 roof a $2,500 deductible is 17.4 percent of the price ($2,500 divided by $14,400), and for a 2 percent wind and hail deductible on a $300,000 dwelling limit it is $6,000, which is 41.7 percent of the same roof. Our guide to wind, hail and hurricane deductibles shows which one applies after a storm, and the hail damage roof claim guide takes the four tests that decide how much the policy pays.

What this table leaves out

Fifteen states is not the country. Other states have contractor or home-improvement statutes, insurance-fraud statutes or administrative rules that this table does not cover, since it reaches only the 15 states listed, and a state with no deductible section may still prosecute a padded claim under its general fraud law, as the Texas and Florida fraud sections show. Statutes also change: Oklahoma's section was amended in 2025, Florida's section 489.147, enacted in 2021, has been amended three times since, and the Colorado text in the table is the 2024 edition of the Colorado Revised Statutes, so a later amendment would not appear. Local rules, licensing board orders and court decisions interpreting these sections are outside the table, and the penalties shown are the ones in each section, not every penalty that could apply.

A homeowner who has been offered a deal that sounds like a waiver is best served by the statute for their own state, read at the legislature's site, and by the department of insurance. The tables above are a way to find that section quickly, and the rest of the claims library sits on the claims guides hub.

Questions about contractors, deductibles and the law