Do you have to pay your deductible if you’re not at fault

Do you have to pay your deductible if you’re not at fault for the accident?

My name is Barry Zlotowicz and I’m a Chicago personal injury lawyer. If you get in an auto accident and your car suffers property damage, do you have to pay your deductible even if you’re not at fault for the accident?

No, you are not required to. If you want, you can file a claim against the defendant’s insurance company and have them pay for your property damage. However, this could result in delays.

The defendant’s insurance will not pay for the damage to your vehicle until they accept liability or responsibility for the accident. That could take a while, especially if you are in Los Angeles where it takes a couple months for the police to release your police report.

Your other option is to use your own auto insurance to pay for the property damage, assuming you have collision coverage. However, if you use your own insurance, you will likely have to pay your car insurance deductible to get your car fixed.

A deductible is a specific amount of money an insured has to pay before the insurance company pitches in to pay for the damage to your vehicle.

If you are not at fault for the accident, you will get your deductible back in most cases. Your insurance company will subrogate, or step in your shoes, and go after the defendant’s auto insurance for reimbursement for the money they put out to fix your car. When they recover, you will receive a check in the mail to reimburse you for the deductible.

There have been a few situations I’ve seen where our client did not have to pay their deductible even though they used their own insurance. For example, I had a few cases where both my client and the defendant were insured by the same company. In those cases, the deductible issue was handled “in-house” and my client did not have to put out the money to pay the deductible.

People often do wait for the other insurance company to accept responsibility because they cannot afford to pay their deductible or they don’t think they should have to because they were not at fault for the accident.

That’s fine. But beware, accident victims, even ones that were not responsible for the accident, have a duty to mitigate their damages.

So for example, let’s say you get hit and a tow company tows your car to their tow yard. While in their yard, your car will likely accrue storage charges. If you had the opportunity to get your car out of their tow yard but you did not, then the defendant’s insurance company is going to say you did not mitigate your damages in an effort to minimize your property damage recovery.

Now check out the LawFull video for more information and if you have any questions, leave them in the comments or contact me at [email protected]