When I was living in Boston I was excited to check out the historic Boston Garden. It was a pretty dumpy building by the time I got there, better known for the rats running around the concourse than championships being won.  I didn’t make it to the Garden to see a hoops game or a hockey game but I was able to see one of the greatest wrestler of the day; Hulk Hogan.  That night when the WWF came to town I was able to cheer on body slams, flying pile drivers and the best part, I able to touch the sweaty shoulder of a giant man named Hulk Hogan. I couldn’t believe how big he was in person. He had those long blond locks that dangled below his iconic bandana and his permanent tan. He was definitely one of the great showman of the day. That night Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper defeated Rick Flair and Sid Justice when Hogan pinned Flair, are you kidding me? Ah, good times there!
Fast forward to a time after this great wrestler retired. He moved on to a reality TV show and worked on other projects along the way. He had a few kids, a wife and lots of drama. Well, one day his son decided to take one of the cars out for a drive with a friend. His son ended up in a terrible accident. Reportedly from racing on the street. His friend who was a passenger in the car almost died and sadly he suffered major brain injuries. The son ended up serving 8 months in jail and Hogan ended up getting sued by the family of the injured young man.
I heard that Mr. Hogan was offered an umbrella insurance policy shortly before the accident happened but never purchased it. This may or may not have happened but it still illustrates the importance of protecting yourself with insurance.
One of the biggest reasons to buy umbrella insurance is to protect what you own. If you have assets that exceed your underlying insurance limits you need to have one. Most auto and home insurance policies cap out at 500 thousand dollars. A few carriers will cover up to a million dollars. But, those are the maximum standard limits.
Another reason to get an umbrella policy is if you have kids that are driving. Kids are the highest liability risk you have in the house.  Your kids may be great, but they lack driving experience. That lack of driving experience leads to accidents and since they are your dependents you are ultimately responsible. Additionally, even if they are grown and decide to drive one of your cars you can still be held liable if they are driving your car.
If you take the time to put a yellow bandana on everyday then you need to have an umbrella policy to protect those bandanas and everything else you own. If you have kids, buy an umbrella policy. In this case Hulk Hogan had two reasons to buy an umbrella policy, kids and assets.  The cost of an umbrella policy is fairly inexpensive. If I told you it only cost a dollar a day to have a million dollars worth of protection would you do it? I hope you would say yes. Call me today to get your umbrella policy started. 951-395-0754 www.socalinsured.com

Have you ever listened to the radio show Handel on the law? It’s a syndicated show that has been around for years. According to his website Handel has been on since 1985, you can check the website out here www.handelonthelaw.com. It lists all the air times if you want to check it out. He describes his show as “bold, entertaining and addictive”.  I agree it is bold and entertaining part. It's kinda like wings served at Hooters. Addictive? Well, it’s pretty solid. I haven’t had to call my therapist to discuss Handel addiction. But maybe that will be a thing someday. 
What I have noticed over the years is that he gets tons of insurance questions. I thought it would be interesting to give an actual insurance agent's perspective on some of these calls. I was able to tune in on Saturday for about an hour before my daughter's track meet. So, in my attempt to continue to give marginal insurance advice here are my takes on a few calls that he got.
The first call was from a guy who was driving around with no insurance. Gold star to this guy by the way! He got hit by someone who had insurance, win for him. Somehow, I feel like the perfect karma situation should have brought two uninsured people together in an accident and let them figure out what to do. But, apparently that’s not what happened. This man’s question was; can he really collect money to fix his car even though he didn’t have any coverage himself?
I have been on the other side of this one. One of my clients was insistent that she wouldn’t have to pay a dime for the other persons car since they were uninsured. Why would she have to pay for someone who was breaking the law, right? I had to explain that her insurance will indeed be paying for the other person’s car because she was at fault in the car accident. She wasn’t happy about this, but here’s the thing. Just because the other party is driving around without insurance doesn’t negate their legal right to have their car fixed. If the uninsured person has an at fault accident they will put themselves in a very costly spot between defending lawsuits and having judgement's against them. So, don’t worry about them.  Just know your insurance will still pay out for the other party and for your car even if they don't have insurance.
The second call was a total disaster. Handel hung up on this guy. He was all over the map telling his story. Here’s what I could glean from this call. It sounded like the caller had an accident. He had hired an attorney to represent him, the attorney did some work and then told him that since the claim wasn’t filed within 14 days he wouldn’t be able to collect from the other party. It sounded more like an excuse for this attorney to drop the case. The caller was wondering if he still had to pay his attorney.
There are two parts to this nonsensical call. The first part is how long do you have to file a claim? In California you have two years to file a claim for injuries and three years to file a claim for damage to your car. Now, should you wait this long, hell no! From my experience the vast majority of people have lapses in insurance.  If you run into a pole in a parking lot and then call insurance three years later, first you aren’t going to remember the date or have proof of when the accident happened. If you had any lapses during that time the company could just deny the claim. You can’t prove when you had the accident. So, don’t wait to file a claim. If you don’t want to get it fixed right away fine. But, at least call it in, get a claim number and then they will have a date the accident happened on record and you can get paid out. The second part was about legal fees. If you have an accident and have insurance, your insurance company will pay to defend you or file suit on your behalf. It doesn’t show up on your declarations page but it is part of your insurance provisions. If you just decide to hire your own attorney to sue someone, yes you will be responsible for their fees, unless it was contingent on the attorney settling the case and taking money from the settlement to pay themselves.
The last call that I heard was a husband calling in because his wife got hit by a Pizza Hut driver and was injured. Ah, delivery drivers. So, here’s the scoop. If you are driving delivery for a fast food place you had better make sure your insurance actually covers you. There are certain companies that will deny claims for delivery drivers because it is considered business use. In this case it sounds like the driver had minimal auto insurance coverage that paid out. So, it was probably some pimple faced kid driving his beater car for some extra cash after school. He was probably reaching into the box and sneaking a slice of pizza. As he was reshaping the pizza to make it look like nothing was missing he looked up too late and ran into a car. Once the kids insurance paid out what happens? Well, in this case you have a giant company behind the driver. So, what do you do? You hire one of those accident injury attorneys. They will jump all over this case. Why? Because there are deep pockets to go after. And the attorney will probably make a pretty nice settlement with Pizza Hut. 
So, that’s the Handel on the law weekly insurance review. It’s a fun show, you can literally hear Handel’s slow burn on certain calls before he loses his mind. When you are ready to talk about insurance give me a call at 951-395-0754 or visit www.socalinsured.com.

I heard on the radio the other day that marijuana in Spain is often smuggled into the country in peoples stomachs. They then poop out the bags of weed and sell it on the street. Only problem is that now the marijuana is covered in poop. Ah, that's Spain so no need to worry silly Americans. Oh, wait a lot of marijuana still comes from across the border and is smuggled the same way here. Enjoy your e-coli laced weed kids!
So, does the above story have anything to do with this article? The point is that  marijuana comes from many different locations.  Do you ever wonder where the plant your friend is buying is being grown? Is it from a foreign country smuggled by gut, is it from the woods outside your home town grown by your friend Bud or is it being grown in the house next door by Mary and Jane? Well, there seem to be several stories per year where a person or people rent a home, and then they turn it into a grow house. I know this happened in my home town a little over a year ago. I'm not proud, just saying it happens all over the place. Now what happens to the house after it is discovered and what would your home insurance cover if your rental property was turned into a grow house?
How does having someone growing marijuana in your rental property impact the house? Let’s take a look and see what happens to these poor houses and homeowners.
You basically need three things to grow a crop inside. First are the plants themselves, second is water and third is light.  Houses are not designed to be factories or have things grown inside other than an occasional house plant. And in order to get them to work as farm/factory it takes several modifications to the home.
You need to run water to all the plants. So, you either need to set up some sort of irrigation system or you need to run hoses from the bathrooms to water the plants. Water and homes are not a great combination. Have you ever had a toilet overflow upstairs and flood the downstairs? It's a mess and imagine you now have hundreds of water hungry plants leaking water or being overfilled. If water gets spilled on any kind of flooring over and over again it can cause severe damage. Carpets, Hardwood, tile all can have significant water damage. Not to mention the actual plumbing on the house can be compromised by the alterations. In addition when the growers are trying to limit smells coming from the house they will often cover windows, and vents and trap all that moisture in the house. When you have a lot of moisture stuck inside it can cause tons of mold to grow. Mold is a huge problem and it causes health issues and it is very difficult to remove because it gets inside the walls and grows on the wood frame of the house.
In order for the plants to grow they need light. And since the sun can’t get into a sealed up house these growers use lamps above the plants. When they install these lights you can imagine they aren’t done with the greatest of care. They will often tap into current outlets causing damage to the wiring. They can bypass the electrical system of the house and tap directly into the main power grid which can cause significant damage to the homes electrical systems. You can imagine there aren’t many licensed electricians being used here.
After most of these grow houses are discovered it is a home insurance nightmare and a disaster for the owners. Toxic fertilizers could be left in the home, mold, water damage, plumbing issues, electrical problems, damage to the drywall.  It is not uncommon that the entire house will need to be gutted. Down to the frame where all the mold is removed and then rebuilt.
Now, insurance may cover certain losses, but it is very possible that insurance won’t cover the majority of the damage. For example mold. Most home policies have a limit on how much mold damage they will cover. Most policy limits are 5000. Now if you need to remove all the drywall and replace it that is going to cost a lot more than 5000 depending on the size of the home. Additionally, most home insurance policies don’t cover damage to your systems. So, damage to the wiring and pipes most likely won’t be covered. Additionally, some policies only cover the sudden discharge of water. Slow long term water seepage may not be covered. So, then it all falls under vandalism. Most policies cover vandalism but does this criminal act fall under vandalism? That kinda leaves certain things up to interpretation and may not be black or white.  
If you own a rental property you really need to make sure that you understand the terms of your policies. What are the exclusions what are covered losses. All companies handle claims differently and cover things differently. More than likely the owner of the home would be out of pocket a lot of money. Insurance may cover some of the damage but probably not all of it. When looking to cover a rental property give me a call at 951-395-0754 or visit www.socalinsured.com

Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of sirens and loud popping is never a good thing. I remember a few years back this is what happened to me. Little did I know at the time that a major home insurance claim was in the process of happening.
As I stuck my head out the front door that night it sounded a bit like a war zone. I couldn’t see or smell anything funky. I was left confused by what could possibly be going on. I decided the best course of action was to stay inside the house in case those pops were random bullets exploding.
The next morning I decided it was time to investigate what happened. It didn’t take long for me to find several fire trucks parked in front of a home around the corner. The neighbors were outside staring at the burned house talking amongst themselves. The garage looked pretty scorched by flames, the garage doors were mangled and pulled apart. An old VW Beetle was charred and smoking in the garage. When I got to the office I quickly found a story about what had happened. In the middle of the night the family inside called the fire department when they noticed smoke coming from their garage. The family safely exited the home and waited for help to arrive. When the fire department arrived they found an old VW Bug fully engulfed in flames which in turn had lit the entire garage and floor above the garage on fire. The damage from the flames and the smoke was extensive.
I did a quick search to see if we were the insurance company covering the home, we were not. But, I did see that they had gotten a quote a few months prior. We had certainly dodged a major home insurance loss when they decided to stay with their current carrier or go with some other insurance company.
Over the next few days the home was boarded up. The family that lived there found a rental property close by and waited for the home to be repaired.  The process of filing a home claim is still similar to filing an auto claim. You call your insurance company, they send an insurance adjuster to view the damage. In this case they would have come out and given the insured a check to get them relocated. The adjuster would then do an inventory of what was lost in the fire. The tools, the Christmas decorations and everything else that was lost due to the fire would be covered under your Personal Property coverage. Most policies provide Replacement Cost coverage. That means they give you money to buy new stuff to replace the old stuff that was lost. If you have a policy that says you have Actual Cash Value, that means they will give you money based off the current value of your belongings. So, if you have an old pair of Nike’s that got destroyed they will give you 25 cents, instead of money to buy a new pair of shoes. Make sure you spend the little extra to get the replacement coverage. The house itself is covered under your Dwelling coverage. The dwelling is anything attached to your home including garages, carports and patios. Now, for that VW Beetle. One would think if it burned up in a house fire your home insurance would cover it. It does not. Your auto insurance would cover the car under Comprehensive coverage. And that means you might be paying two deductibles, one for the house repair and the other to replace the car. Some companies offer to waive one deductible if a claim on two things happens at the same time, others do not do that.
After what seemed like a year, the house was finally fixed. The car was replaced and the insured moved on with their lives. They however have never parked the VW in the garage again, poor little car is taking a beating from the sun these days, but can you blame them? If you’d like to talk about your insurance coverage give us a call at 951-395-0754 or visit www.socalinsured.com.