GUIDES: OWNERSHIP AND LIFE EVENTS
Ownership and life events: keeping the policy in step with the house
A homeowners policy is a contract with named people about a particular house, so it is tested whenever either one changes. The Insurance Information Institute, citing ISO data, reports that 5.3 percent of insured homes had a claim in 2023, but the risk that these guides address is quieter: a death, a sale or a handover that leaves the paper out of step with the facts.
These guides start from an event rather than a coverage term. One follows the first 90 days after an owner dies, when the policy must keep protecting a house that may be empty and whose legal owner is not yet settled. Another follows the sale of a house, when the date you cancel decides whether you are uninsured as an owner or paying for coverage on a house you no longer own, and when two separate refunds arrive on two separate clocks. Others cover a house held in a trust, a move, a second unit on the property, and an ex-spouse who is still on the deed.
Each guide cites the statutes, regulations or regulator pages behind its rules, with the check date in its source box. None of them can tell you what your policy will do, because your declarations page and policy wording decide that. They tell you which questions to ask the insurer, in writing, and in what order.
A useful way to read them together is by date. An inherited house is usually the start of a story whose likely ending is a sale or a trust, so the vacancy and probate questions in the inheritance guide often lead directly to the refund and closing questions in the sale guide, and a divorce decree can send a house through the same steps. In both, the habit that pays is the same: ask the insurer a specific question, get the answer in writing, and write the date beside it. A policy that matched the house last year may not match it after a death or a sale, and the insurer cannot know that until someone tells it.
General information, not legal or insurance advice. Flood insurance is separate from a homeowners policy.
You inherited a house: the first 90 days
Who the policy covers once the named insured has died, the vacancy rules that start a clock on an empty house, the federal mortgage protections for heirs, and the questions to put to the insurer in writing.
A house in a living trust
Five ways to hold title, from revocable trusts to LLCs and transfer-on-death deeds, mapped to the HO-3 definitions of you and insured, plus whose names go on the claim check.
Cancelling after you sell
A refund worked in days under pro rata and short-rate methods, the closing-day gaps that leave a house uninsured, and the separate clocks for the insurer refund and the escrow balance.
Belongings during a move
Named perils against the mover's federal liability levels, the $100 per pound rule, claim deadlines, and handling damage and a truck fire worked out.
An ADU on your property
Attached units in the dwelling limit, detached units under the 10 percent other-structures cap, the rental exclusion that removes a leased cottage, and the shortfall math.
An ex-spouse still on the deed
Ownership status after divorce against the HO-3 definitions of you and insured, the mortgage clause, what an insurer may do, and the payees on a worked fire claim.
Related topics sit in other hubs: the mortgage and lender guides cover what happens to escrow and lender requirements when a loan ends, the claims guides cover what to do when a loss follows an event, and the catastrophe and market guides cover nonrenewal. Every guide on the site is listed on the main guides page.