Insurance Bad Faith Checklists & Guides
8 practical resources for policyholders dealing with a denial, a delay, or an offer far below what a claim is worth. The steps here apply wherever your policy was issued.
Start with your state
Whether you can sue your insurer under a statute — and what you can recover if you do — differs sharply between the states we serve. Choose where your policy was issued.
Checklists
What to Do When Your Insurance Claim Is Denied
A denial is not the end of the claim, and the first two weeks after one matter more than most people realize. These steps protect your position while you work out what the denial actually means.
Open →How to Build the Paper Trail
These cases are won on documents, and most of the useful ones are things you can create yourself as you go. Start now, even if you have not decided whether to pursue anything.
Open →How to Request Your Complete Claim File
The claim file is the insurer’s own contemporaneous record of what it knew and what it decided. Asking for it early costs nothing and occasionally changes the conversation on its own.
Open →How to Respond to a Reservation of Rights Letter
This letter tends to arrive when an insurer agrees to defend you but wants to preserve the argument that it does not have to pay. It is not a denial, and it is not nothing.
Open →How to File a Complaint About Your Insurer
Every state has a regulator that receives complaints about insurers and requires them to respond. It is worth doing, and it is worth understanding what it does not accomplish.
Open →What to Do About a Judgment Above Your Policy Limits
Finding out that a judgment exceeds your coverage is alarming, and the instinct is to deal with the judgment. The more important question is usually how the case got there.
Open →Free guides
Steps in a Bad Faith Lawsuit
A plain-language walk through how these cases actually proceed, so the process holds no surprises and you know which stages matter most.
Open →Finding a Lawyer to Sue an Insurance Company
Suing an insurance company is a specific kind of case, and not every injury or contract lawyer takes them on. Here is what to ask a prospective lawyer, and what the answers should sound like.
Open →General information, not legal advice. Insurance law differs by state and every policy is different.