Welcome to Texas! Everything here is bigger and better. Including our love for all things guns. Our job is to help you understand the complexity of insuring both you and your possessions from every angle. That means you need to understand how your Home Insurance can cover your guns and their use. The two ends of this equation are replacing a firearm in the event of a claim situation on your home and then what happens if you are required to use that firearm in your home and damage is done.
One question that is constantly brought up in Dallas, Ft Worth, Cleburne, and beyond is if my guns are stolen or destroyed does my homeowners insurance pay to replace them? The answer is maybe because it depends. Why is that you ask? It has to do with what is known as a sub-limit. On any home insurance policy is a maximum amount of coverage for your personal property known as a policy limit. That would include your guns. What you may not realize is that the limit for personal property has other lower limits for specific items. This is known as a sub-limit.
So why does this matter on a home insurance policy with respect to guns? Homeowner Insurance include sub-limits for things like comic books, baseball cards, fine china, and yes, guns. Items that are collected with abnormally high value are typically capped at how much a company will pay out in the event of a claim. Guns can be subject to two different kinds of these limitations. One, there can be a maximum amount that would be paid to replace any single item. Two, there can be a cap that will be paid for the guns in aggregate if your home was to burn down and be totally destroyed. It's important to recognize and understand these two distinctions if you have extremely valuable firearms in your collection.
So what can Insurance For Texans do about it? First and foremost, as independent insurance agents, we work with different companies that will cover those items to your advantage. There are home insurance companies that will have higher limits than others for single items as well as the total collection. Some of these same companies will also allow you to buy additional coverage above the base level. We also work with companies that can insure your firearms individually using what is known as a floater that will make sure your most valuable items are fully protected no matter what happens to them.
The more interesting part of this equation is what happens if you end up in a situation where using the gun in your home becomes a reality. The Castle Doctrine is alive and well in Texas. So the personal liability piece of this scenario is generally not a big consideration. Though it is definitely a much discussed item. The more controversial topic is going to revolve around how is the house cleaned up and repaired from resulting damage.
So who cleans this up? If there is a bio-hazard issue in play, always use a professional service. But also realize that this isn't inexpensive. This situation will likely exceed your deductible very quickly. It will be cleaned up, right? There are two types of home insurance policies that can be had in Texas. There is open peril and named peril. Since open peril covers everything not named in the exclusion list, the clean up will be covered. On a named peril policy, this one gets really tricky. Is it truly a home invasion? Is it something else that is not on the list? This is why it is important for us to understand you and what you need covered. Agents ask these questions to protect you, not intrude on your life.
If you are unsure of what your Burleson home insurance policy has for coverage for your firearms or other valuable items, let us do a review of your current policy so that those gaps can be identified ahead of times and addressed.
