LIABILITY: WORKERS AT HOME

Contractor or worker injured on your property: who pays, from the roofer to the friend holding the ladder

A roofer employed by an insured contractor who falls from your roof is paid first by his employer's workers' compensation insurance, not by your homeowners policy. Your policy's medical payments coverage excludes anyone eligible for workers' compensation, but your personal liability coverage still stands behind you if the worker sues over a hazard you caused. The real gaps are household employees in states that require you to insure them, and contractors who carry no coverage at all.

Disclaimer: Published averages and benchmark ranges, not a quote. This page is not insurance advice, and it is not legal advice on employment or workers' compensation law. Your premium will differ based on your home, location, claims history, and insurer. Flood insurance is separate from a standard homeowners policy.

Two sentences in the ISO Homeowners 3 Special Form, HO 00 03 10 00, decide most of these cases, and they are worded differently. The personal liability exclusion removes bodily injury to a person eligible for benefits "required to be provided by an 'insured'" under a workers' compensation law. The medical payments exclusion removes bodily injury to any person eligible for benefits "required to be provided under any" workers' compensation law, with no mention of who has to provide them. A carpenter covered by his own employer's policy is therefore outside your medical payments coverage but can still be inside your liability coverage. A housekeeper you are legally required to insure is outside both.

Contractor, handyman, household employee or friend: the pocket that pays

The table runs each common worker through the HO-3 sample's Section II. Coverage E is personal liability: it pays damages when you are legally liable and pays for your defense. Coverage F is medical payments to others: it pays medical bills without anyone proving fault, up to a small per-person limit. Insurers file their own forms and state amendments, so confirm each row against your own policy.

The first row surprises most homeowners. The roofer's employer pays his lost wages and medical bills through workers' compensation, which is normally the worker's only remedy against his own employer. It is not his only remedy against everyone else. A homeowner who left a broken stair or an unmarked hole in the yard is a third party, and an injured worker can bring a premises claim against that third party. Coverage E is built for that suit. The sample promises to "provide a defense at our expense by counsel of our choice, even if the suit is groundless, false or fraudulent," and Section II Additional Coverage A pays the claim expenses in addition to the limit.

The second row is the reason our renovation guide, following Insurance Information Institute advice, tells homeowners to see a contractor's liability and workers' compensation policies before work starts. An uninsured contractor's employee still has medical bills and lost pay, and the search for someone who can pay often reaches the homeowner. Our guide to telling your insurer about a renovation covers the paperwork side of the same project, including why a remodel changes your dwelling limit.

The last row overrides the others. Section II Exclusion E.2 removes bodily injury "arising out of or in connection with a 'business' conducted from an 'insured location'," and the form's definition of business reaches any trade or occupation, full-time, part-time or occasional. A part-time assistant who trips over cables in your home office is that exclusion's ordinary case. The home business guide lists the endorsements and policies that fill the hole.

The residence employee: a definition written for nannies, gardeners and live-in help

The HO-3 sample has a special category for people a household employs, and it treats them better than ordinary visitors in some ways and worse in others. Definition 10 reads:

"Residence employee" means: a. An employee of an "insured", or an employee leased to an "insured" by a labor leasing firm, under an agreement between an "insured" and the labor leasing firm, whose duties are related to the maintenance or use of the "residence premises", including household or domestic services; or b. One who performs similar duties elsewhere not related to the "business" of an "insured".

Three words carry the weight. The person must be an employee of an insured, not an independent business you hire for a job. The duties must relate to the maintenance or use of the residence premises, which takes in cleaning, cooking, child care, yard work and routine upkeep. And the definition then carves out a group: a residence employee "does not include a temporary employee who is furnished to an 'insured' to substitute for a permanent 'residence employee' on leave or to meet seasonal or short-term workload conditions." A substitute nanny sent by an agency for two weeks is not a residence employee under the sample. Such a worker falls back to the general rules for anyone on the property with permission, and the agency that furnished the worker usually carries the comp.

Residence employees get four things other people do not. Coverage F's grant excludes "you or regular residents of your household except 'residence employees'," so a live-in caregiver can claim medical payments where a live-in relative cannot. The off-premises part of Coverage F pays for a person hurt away from your home by a residence employee acting in the course of the job, such as a pedestrian struck by your gardener's wheelbarrow at the curb. Personal property of a residence employee is covered at your request while it is in a residence an insured occupies. And the closing paragraph of Section II Exclusion E switches off the motor vehicle, watercraft, aircraft, hovercraft and uninsured-premises exclusions for bodily injury "to a 'residence employee' arising out of and in the course of the 'residence employee's' employment by an 'insured'." A housekeeper hurt in your car while running a household errand is not knocked out by the motor vehicle exclusion that would remove the same injury to a guest riding along.

They also lose something. Coverage F Exclusion G.1 removes injury to a residence employee that both occurs off the insured location and does not arise out of the employment. A nanny who sprains an ankle at her own apartment on a day off has no claim on your policy, which is what most households would expect. The bigger loss is the workers' compensation exclusion, which falls hardest on this group because, in many states, the homeowner is the employer the law addresses.

Eligibility, not purchase: how the comp exclusions work

Coverage E Exclusion F.4 says personal liability does not apply to "'Bodily injury' to any person eligible to receive any benefits voluntarily provided or required to be provided by an 'insured' under any: a. Workers' compensation law; b. Non-occupational disability law; or c. Occupational disease law." Coverage F Exclusion G.2 repeats the list for "any person eligible to receive benefits voluntarily provided or required to be provided under any" of the same three laws.

The test is whether benefits are required or have been voluntarily provided, not whether anyone actually bought a policy. A household in a state that requires comp for a full-time housekeeper cannot fall back on Section II by skipping the comp policy (California is the exception noted in the handyman section below, because its homeowners policies must carry that comp). The exclusion still applies, because the law required the benefits. That is the most expensive misunderstanding on this page: the homeowner believes the injury is a liability claim, and the policy treats it as a comp claim with no comp policy behind it.

The phrase "by an 'insured'" in the liability exclusion is just as important in the other direction. A worker whose comp comes from his own employer is not eligible for benefits provided by you. Exclusion F.4 does not touch his lawsuit against you, and Coverage E can respond. Exclusion G.2 has no such qualifier, so the same worker is outside your medical payments coverage. In practice, the contractor's comp insurer pays his medical bills, and your liability insurer defends you if he, or the comp insurer through subrogation, comes after you for negligence.

State law decides who must provide comp to a household worker, and that is where the next table comes in. Some states exempt domestic workers outright; others bring them in above a threshold of hours or pay. The same nanny can be a Coverage F claimant in Texas and an uninsured comp claim in New York.

State rules on workers' compensation for household workers

The table covers 12 states whose official code text we read on October 31, 2026. It is not a 50-state survey. States whose official sites could not be read are left out rather than filled in from secondary summaries. Where the official page could not be fetched directly, the row cites an Internet Archive copy of that official page, labelled with its save date. Each row states the household-worker rule only; general employer thresholds, farm rules and corporate officer elections are omitted.

The thresholds sort the 12 states into three groups. Florida, Texas and Virginia exclude domestic workers, so a housekeeper injured in those states is usually a Coverage F and Coverage E question under the sample. Washington excludes almost every household with one domestic worker and excludes repair and garden work in the home outright. The other eight bring household workers in above a line, and the lines sit at very different heights. California's is the lowest in the table: a worker paid more than $100 who works at least 52 hours over 90 days is inside the law, which a cleaner working four hours a week reaches in 13 weeks. Illinois counts all domestic hours together, so two part-time workers at 20 hours each meet its 40-hour test. New York counts hours with the same employer.

Crossing a threshold changes which coverage answers. In Maryland, a nanny earning $1,000 in cash in a calendar quarter is a covered employee, so the household is required to provide comp, and the HO-3 sample's two comp exclusions take Coverage E and Coverage F away for her work injuries. Below $1,000, the same nanny is outside the comp law unless worker and employer file a joint election, and her injury goes back to the homeowners policy.

The handyman problem: where the form stops and state law starts

The HO-3 sample never says who counts as an employee. It assumes the question has an answer and builds the residence employee category on top of it. That is why the handyman row is the hardest one in the first table. A person who fixes a gate, cleans gutters twice a year and invoices you under a business name is a contractor in common usage. A person who comes every Tuesday, works the hours you set, uses your tools and is paid in cash may be your employee under state law, whatever either of you calls the arrangement.

Two of the state texts we read show how far apart the answers can be. Washington's RCW 51.12.020(2) leaves out of mandatory coverage "any person employed to do gardening, maintenance, or repair, in or about the private home of the employer," and defines repair as work "to restore to sound condition after damage." A Washington household that employs someone for home repair is outside the mandatory comp law for that work. California runs the other way. Labor Code 2750.5 creates "a rebuttable presumption affecting the burden of proof that a worker performing services for which a license is required" under the Contractors State License Law, "or who is performing such services for a person who is required to obtain such a license is an employee rather than an independent contractor." To prove contractor status, the hirer must show factors including that the worker has "the right to control and discretion as to the manner of performance" and is "customarily engaged in an independently established business." (California text: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, Labor Code 2750.5, Wayback copy, saved June 14, 2023.)

Put the California presumption next to Exclusion F.4 and the result is plain. A homeowner who hires an unlicensed person for work that needs a license can be treated as that worker's employer. If the worker is an employee and also clears the 52-hour or $100 line in Labor Code 3352, the homeowner is the one required to provide comp, and Coverage E's comp exclusion applies. California closes that hole by statute: Insurance Code section 11590 bars any comprehensive personal liability policy from being issued or renewed in the state unless it covers workers' compensation for a person defined as an employee by Labor Code 3351(d), and a policy without that wording is read as if it had it. The mandated coverage steps aside only when other valid workers' compensation insurance applies. In California, the homeowners policy is therefore usually where a household employee's comp claim goes first; ask the insurer in writing how its form handles it. Virginia shows a third pattern: its definition of employee excludes "casual employees," which describes most one-off repair hires before the domestic servant exclusion is even reached.

Practical tests travel across states better than labels do. Does the worker have a business license or contractor registration? Does the worker carry a liability policy and, if employing anyone, a comp policy, with certificates naming the business? Does the worker set the method and supply the tools? Is the job a defined project with a price, or open-ended hours at a rate? The more answers point to a business, the more likely the first table's contractor rows apply. The more they point to hours under your direction, the more likely the residence employee row and your state's threshold decide the claim.

Medical payments and liability, side by side in dollars

The sample sets no dollar limits; those come from your declarations page. The inputs below are labelled as assumptions for the arithmetic, not typical limits or benchmarks. Change them to match your own declarations. Every case assumes the injured person is not a resident of your household and that no business is involved.

Assumed inputs for all four cases: Coverage F limit of $5,000 per person; Coverage E limit of $300,000 per occurrence; no Section II deductible, matching the sample, whose deductible applies only to "the total of all loss payable under Section I."

Working each case by hand. In Case A, $3,850 is less than the $5,000 per-person limit, so Coverage F pays all of it and $1,150 of the limit goes unused; the limit is per person per accident, not a yearly pool. In Case B, Coverage F stops at $5,000 of the $11,400 in bills, which leaves $6,400 of medical bills plus $4,600 of lost pay, or $11,000, for the liability claim. The insurer's total outlay is $5,000 plus $11,000, or $16,000. Whether a medical payments payment is credited against a later liability settlement depends on your policy and state law; the sample says only that Coverage F payment "is not an admission of liability by an 'insured' or us." In Case C, $140,000 is less than the $300,000 limit, and the $32,000 of defense costs sits outside it, so the insurer's outlay is $172,000 and the homeowner's is $0. Had a jury returned $460,000 instead, Coverage E would pay $300,000 and the homeowner would face the remaining $160,000. Case D comes to $0 from Section II because both comp exclusions apply; the $26,000 in medical bills, plus wage benefits the state comp law would have required, belongs to the household.

Two details shape the totals in real claims. Coverage F pays only "necessary medical expenses that are incurred or medically ascertained within three years from the date of an accident," and the injured person must give written proof of claim and authorize release of medical records. And Coverage E has one limit "regardless of the number of 'insureds', claims made or persons injured," so a scaffold collapse that hurts two workers draws on the same $300,000. When a single occurrence could run past that figure, the next layer is an umbrella policy, which our umbrella insurance guide prices against a worked $900,000 judgment.

Certificates and contracts to collect before anyone climbs a ladder

Almost every bad outcome in the first table starts before the work does. A homeowner who collects four documents can usually push an injury to the contractor's insurers, where it belongs.

Indemnity wording deserves a careful read before you sign, because it can run toward you or away from you. The sample's Coverage E excludes liability "under any contract or agreement entered into by an 'insured'," and then restores written contracts "that directly relate to the ownership, maintenance or use of an 'insured location'." If a contractor's form asks you to hold the contractor harmless for injuries on your property, the sample would usually cover the liability you assume, because a home repair contract relates to maintenance of the insured location. It still uses your limit and your claim history. A contract in which the contractor indemnifies you, backed by its liability policy, is the better trade, and a lawyer is the right person to review it for a large project.

For household employees, the paperwork is different: a payroll record of hours and pay, so you know when a worker crosses your state's threshold, and, once that happens, a workers' compensation policy. In the states above with thresholds, the hours and pay records answer the question the insurer will ask after an injury.

The first hour after someone is hurt on your property

Call for medical help first. The sample's Section II Additional Coverage B pays "expenses for first aid to others incurred by an 'insured' for 'bodily injury' covered under this policy," in addition to the limits. Beyond first aid, hold back. Section II Condition C.6 says: "No 'insured' shall, except at such 'insured's' own cost, voluntarily make payment, assume obligation or incur expense other than for first aid to others at the time of the 'bodily injury'." Promising a friend you will cover the hospital bill, or handing a worker cash for lost days, is a payment the insurer is not bound to reimburse.

Then gather facts while they exist. Photograph the stair, deck board, ladder footing or wet floor before anyone repairs it. Write down who employs the injured person, the employer's name and phone number, and whether a comp carrier was named on any certificate you collected. Collect witness names and addresses, because the sample's notice duty asks for "names and addresses of any claimants and witnesses."

Notify your insurer in writing as soon as practical, even if you expect the contractor's comp policy to pay. The sample conditions coverage on that notice when a late report is prejudicial to the insurer, and on prompt forwarding of "every notice, demand, summons or other process." A comp carrier's subrogation letter can arrive months later; an insurer that already has the incident on file is in a better position to defend it. Our step-by-step claim guide covers the property side of reporting, and the dog bite guide follows a liability claim from medical payments through an umbrella layer, a path the worker cases share.

Four places to open in your own policy

Start with the declarations page: find the Coverage E limit per occurrence and the Coverage F limit per person; Case B in the arithmetic shows how fast a small Coverage F limit runs out. In the definitions, check whether your form keeps the sample's residence employee wording and its temporary-worker carve-out. In Section II exclusions, look for the two comp exclusions and note whether your form keeps the "by an 'insured'" wording in the liability version. Finally, look for any state amendatory endorsement, because some states change how household employees are handled in homeowners policies. If a worker is regularly in your home, take your state's threshold from the table and your payroll record to your agent and ask, in writing, which policy pays if that worker is hurt tomorrow. Pool, trampoline and e-bike liability are handled in their own guides on the liability hub.

Nannies, roofers and the friend with a ladder: your questions