Subrogation is a concept that's understood among legal and insurance companies but rarely by the customers who employ them. Even if it sounds complicated, it is to your advantage to understand the steps of the process. The more knowledgeable you are, the better decisions you can make about your insurance policy.

An insurance policy you hold is a promise that, if something bad occurs, the business that insures the policy will make good without unreasonable delay. If your home is burglarized, your property insurance steps in to compensate you or facilitate the repairs, subject to state property damage laws.

But since figuring out who is financially accountable for services or repairs is usually a confusing affair – and time spent waiting sometimes compounds the damage to the policyholder – insurance companies in many cases decide to pay up front and assign blame afterward. They then need a way to recover the costs if, once the situation is fully assessed, they weren't actually in charge of the payout.

For Example

You are in a highway accident. Another car collided with yours. The police show up to assess the situation, you exchange insurance details, and you go on your way. You have comprehensive insurance and file a repair claim. Later it's determined that the other driver was to blame and her insurance policy should have paid for the repair of your vehicle. How does your company get its money back?

How Does Subrogation Work?

This is where subrogation comes in. It is the way that an insurance company uses to claim payment after it has paid for something that should have been paid by some other entity. Some insurance firms have in-house property damage lawyers and personal injury attorneys, or a department dedicated to subrogation; others contract with a law firm. Normally, only you can sue for damages done to your person or property. But under subrogation law, your insurance company is given some of your rights in exchange for making good on the damages. It can go after the money that was originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.

How Does This Affect Individuals?

For starters, if you have a deductible, your insurance company wasn't the only one that had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you have a stake in the outcome as well – to be precise, $1,000. If your insurance company is timid on any subrogation case it might not win, it might opt to recover its expenses by upping your premiums and call it a day. On the other hand, if it knows which cases it is owed and goes after them aggressively, it is acting both in its own interests and in yours. If all ten grand is recovered, you will get your full $1,000 deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found 50 percent culpable), you'll typically get $500 back, depending on your state laws.

In addition, if the total cost of an accident is over your maximum coverage amount, you could be in for a stiff bill. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as Personal injury attorney Lithia Springs, GA, pursue subrogation and succeeds, it will recover your expenses in addition to its own.

All insurers are not the same. When shopping around, it's worth measuring the reputations of competing companies to determine if they pursue winnable subrogation claims; if they resolve those claims without dragging their feet; if they keep their clients apprised as the case continues; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements right away so that you can get your deductible back and move on with your life. If, instead, an insurer has a record of paying out claims that aren't its responsibility and then protecting its income by raising your premiums, even attractive rates won't outweigh the eventual headache.

Personal injury attorney Lithia Springs, GA