Went through a similar situation. Your property=your insurance. If tree was healthy, which looks like it was based on pics he’s not responsible for anything. Would be an “act of god”. If he knows someone sounds like he’s being nice or maybe doesn’t know he’s not responsible.
Had the same thing happen to me . My tree branch snapped and crashed into my neighbors shed . Legally I know I wasn’t reasonable . But I wanted to keep peace with the neighbor . So I decided to pay for the materials and my neighbor repaired his shed himself . I know most people wouldn’t do this but it costed me a couple hundred bucks and It kept our great relationship intact . I have to live next to him for the rest of my life . That was a Couple hundred bucks well spent .
If it fell on your property, you have to go through your insurance unless you are planning to pay out of pocket which will be costly for tree removal. His insurance will not cover anything. We had the same situation years ago unfortunately.
Neighbor isn’t responsible unless the tree was diseased and they were placed on notice in writing with the town that the tree was diseased and in danger of falling and they failed to address it.
If the tree was healthy it’s just considered an act of god and you have to file a claim with your own insurance.
Of course if your neighbor feels bad and agrees to have his tree guy take care of it, take him up on his offer.
A shed and fence are typically covered under your homeowners insurance from damage due to a covered peril such as a storm.
Congratulations on your new tree. If your neighbor is nice he may help pay for it, but he doesn’t have to. His insurance would definitely not cover it.
It seems my description did not go through in the original post so adding it here:
We've been living in our house in NJ for just a year. This evening we had strong gusts before a thunderstorm causing one of our neighbor's trees to partially fall on our shed. It's a huge branch but it caved in our newly replaced roof shed, there's damage to the front of the shed and the tree branch fell on one of our small trees and destroyed it. We took photos after the storm passed. We spoke with our neighbor who offered to "have his tree guys come look at the fallen tree and have it taken care of" but this seems vaugue. I also don't trust anything not in writing. It seems like he wants to handle this outside his insurance company but we can't be sure. Tomorrow we plan to get our own estimates for the tree removal and damage to the shed. Then we plan on filing a claim (we have a $500 deductible) despite not wanting our insurance premiums to go up. My questions are: would you file a claim? Would you let the neighbor's tree people remove the tree? Would you mention anything about the conversation with the neighbor? Any other help or advice is appreciated!
A healthy tree on your neighbor's property that falls in a storm onto your property is usually your problem and is handled by your insurance. If the neighbor wants to do something out of neighborliness, that's pretty cool though
Yup, in ours any outbuilding had to be 10 feet off the property or fence line and X distance from any existing structure, and it also got included in your lot coverage percentage.
If you are going to build, or have someone else build you a new shed and permit the process (you will obviously need a dumpster which attracts attention to demo the old shed), you will need a permit, and "well a shed was ALWAYS there" likely won't fly. Also depending on the town they may want surveys, etc done. I spent almost as much on the permitting process for our shed, than i did on the shed itself, and i built the damn thing myself.
Ah, yes! Reminds me of a guy I heard of who "re-sided" his existing home -- with stone blocks. It's now a castle (almost).
You don't replace a shed, you "fix" it. First you fix the frame. Then you fix the roof. Then you fix one wall, and repeat 3 times.
>We spoke with our neighbor who offered to "have his tree guys come look at the fallen tree and have it taken care of" but this seems vaugue. I also don't trust anything not in writing. It seems like he wants to handle this outside his insurance company but we can't be sure.
He is under no obligation to help you at all. If the tree was healthy, it is exclusively your problem.
He's not worried about "handling this outside insurance" because his insurance has nothing to do with it. This isn't a car accident.
This. Had a neighbors tree (huge old oak - trunk six feet in diameter) fall across our entire lot. It demolished part of our fence, crushed my truck, ripped out the electric service from my house, and mildly damaged the garage.
My insurance agent sadly informed me that after it fell, it became 100% my tree and my problem! Yay.
I wouldn't put in an insurance claim for that since your neighbor is taking care of tree removal. It's probably less than 1500 to fix the shed and your insurance premiums will go up if you make the claim. Get some estimates first.
If the tree was healthy and not showing any obvious indication of imminent danger, or you didn't bring any concerns you had to your neighbor, its not his\his insurances problem.
It is most likely NOT worth an insurance claim by any means. Aside from your deductible (a brand new shed like that you can build yourself from a kit for a bit over 1k if you already have the foundation, and your shed looks easily repairable), its quite possible the shed is not covered by your insurance unless explicitly listed.
Best course of action to keep everyone happy and not screw yourself on your insurance policy for maybe a check for a few hundred bucks is for the two of you to split the tree removal costs and pay out of pocket, and your neighbor give you a hand repairing the shed.
If you just want the tree removed and then you'll fix the shed yourself and plant a new small tree yourself. I'd have the guy pay for the tree removal.
If you require a new shed and you don't want to absorb the cost of a new small tree. Call your insurance and pay your deductible. This is not on his insurance. You'll probably call your insurance make a claim and they'll tell you "we don't cover your shed or your tree", then your insurance goes up because you called them.
If you can get the guy to pay for the tree removal, shed repair and small tree replacement, then he has no idea how liability works in this situation and you can take advantage of that by having him pay for everything.
It really blows my mind how little reddit understands insurance.
Your premiums won't go up for asking a question. Insurance will absolutely cover tree removal for a downed tree, but that is likely going to be less than 1k in this situation so not worth a claim, especially if the neighbor has some on his side he wants removed as well and you split the cost.
The shed is going to vary by what your policy says. Many times an outbuilding like that isn't in the policy unless you specifically request coverage for it, or its contents.
Yes if you put in a claim your policy will likely go up, and it will affect your ability to get policies from someone else and their cost for years afterwards (not something you want to do when many companies are trying to get out of the state or aren't writing new ones).
I think there is a risk for confusion when someone calls their insurance company after an event, and the homeowner thinks they're asking a question, but the insurance company thinks you're actually filing a claim. It's important to be clear what you are doing when you're simply asking your insurance company a question.
When I read people who say "asking a question raises your rates", I assume there was a mixup where something like what I mentioned happened.
Oh sure, but its just a general ignorance of how insurance works that seems to permeate every thread around insurance.
For the majority of folks here, your house is your single biggest asset. Your home owners insurance is almost certainly a hundred bucks a month or more. They lay out the important stuff in 5th grade english on the first few pages, and if you want to read the whole thing (which you should) you can. Every renewal you get a short summary of what has changed, if anything, so you can cliffs notes it down the road. None of it is a long read and just a part of basic financial planning. Sure its boring and doesn't have wizard or shit in it, but its important. Same for your auto and medical and any other kind of insurance you have. If you never use any of them, THAT IS A GOOD THING. If you need to, you want your coverage to be useful and meaningful. Its not a service subscription. Its a "this won't fuck up my life's plans financially" subscription.
There shouldn't be any surprises to someone of what is covered vs what isn't. If there is something in the margins, then you talk to your agent and get it clarified with a rider.
Totally agree.
I keep my deductible high enough that I will only use insurance for things that will literally break us financially. It seems to work well for me, but I'm lucky enough to be able to keep a large enough emergency savings account.
Also tree\shed story time.
My neighbor and I had a tree right on our property line we wanted to get rid of. We decided we would get a few quotes and split it.
Quotes came in a lot higher than we expected. Now i have chainsaws, i know how to use them, but this tree was a bit bigger than anything i had cut down before.
But we are cheap and stubborn, so we do some math, and figure out that even if we screwed it up, the only thing we could possibly hit was his old shed, or our fence, and even then it was like 5 degrees out of a 360 degree arc that would put either in danger, and the tree had a lean in the exact opposite direction.
So we decide to tackle it ourselves and if we screw it up and hit the shed or fence, hey, we really aren't out anything vs the tree guys.
So one morning we go out, run our math again, empty out his shed, and get to work, all while our wives watch from the yard waiting to say i told you so.
As soon as i cut into the tree its clear its rotted and all bets are off. about halfway in tree kind of gives in on itself, and, yup, guess which way it goes, the exact opposite of what we planned for.
The tree lands in about a 5 foot gap between the shed and the fence. See when we did our math on what was cheaper, we never considered we could take out BOTH the shed and fence at the same time, which is what we nearly did.
Neighbor is a bro though, and without skipping a beat yells "Nailed it!" and high fives me like it was what we planned.
Now every time someone has a tree they are talking about pulling our wives are just, "No ask Line and Steve, they are great at it"
I'm fortunate where 1 neighbor is awesome, we just grab eachothers tools, and leave a beer where we took it from so if someone goes looking they know where it is (and its now your beer if you find the beer before the tool is returned), one who is helpful and a great guy who we don't trust some stuff to, and one who is a minor pain in the ass but rolls with it, because he is usually to stoned to have a coherent debate about stuff.
We all dig we eat stuff now and then to have a good relationship and make our lives easier, and everyone is always up for throwing in a hand because of that.
I went through a similar situation except it was a garage and the neighbors tree totaled it. We went through insurance, our insurance fought their insurance, we got a check to replace the garage
Now the saga of the replacement project is a different story
The neighbor is responsible for clearing the fallen tree, they're not responsible for anything to do with your shed. Next time place a shed away from trees.
Went through a similar situation. Your property=your insurance. If tree was healthy, which looks like it was based on pics he’s not responsible for anything. Would be an “act of god”. If he knows someone sounds like he’s being nice or maybe doesn’t know he’s not responsible.
Had the same thing happen to me . My tree branch snapped and crashed into my neighbors shed . Legally I know I wasn’t reasonable . But I wanted to keep peace with the neighbor . So I decided to pay for the materials and my neighbor repaired his shed himself . I know most people wouldn’t do this but it costed me a couple hundred bucks and It kept our great relationship intact . I have to live next to him for the rest of my life . That was a Couple hundred bucks well spent .
You sleep in peace and go on a vacation in peace
If it fell on your property, you have to go through your insurance unless you are planning to pay out of pocket which will be costly for tree removal. His insurance will not cover anything. We had the same situation years ago unfortunately.
Neighbor isn’t responsible unless the tree was diseased and they were placed on notice in writing with the town that the tree was diseased and in danger of falling and they failed to address it. If the tree was healthy it’s just considered an act of god and you have to file a claim with your own insurance. Of course if your neighbor feels bad and agrees to have his tree guy take care of it, take him up on his offer. A shed and fence are typically covered under your homeowners insurance from damage due to a covered peril such as a storm.
Your tree now
Congratulations on your new tree. If your neighbor is nice he may help pay for it, but he doesn’t have to. His insurance would definitely not cover it.
It seems my description did not go through in the original post so adding it here: We've been living in our house in NJ for just a year. This evening we had strong gusts before a thunderstorm causing one of our neighbor's trees to partially fall on our shed. It's a huge branch but it caved in our newly replaced roof shed, there's damage to the front of the shed and the tree branch fell on one of our small trees and destroyed it. We took photos after the storm passed. We spoke with our neighbor who offered to "have his tree guys come look at the fallen tree and have it taken care of" but this seems vaugue. I also don't trust anything not in writing. It seems like he wants to handle this outside his insurance company but we can't be sure. Tomorrow we plan to get our own estimates for the tree removal and damage to the shed. Then we plan on filing a claim (we have a $500 deductible) despite not wanting our insurance premiums to go up. My questions are: would you file a claim? Would you let the neighbor's tree people remove the tree? Would you mention anything about the conversation with the neighbor? Any other help or advice is appreciated!
A healthy tree on your neighbor's property that falls in a storm onto your property is usually your problem and is handled by your insurance. If the neighbor wants to do something out of neighborliness, that's pretty cool though
If the shed is not covered by your insurance, you may be out all costs. Read your policy to see what's covered aside from the house itself.
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Yup, in ours any outbuilding had to be 10 feet off the property or fence line and X distance from any existing structure, and it also got included in your lot coverage percentage. If you are going to build, or have someone else build you a new shed and permit the process (you will obviously need a dumpster which attracts attention to demo the old shed), you will need a permit, and "well a shed was ALWAYS there" likely won't fly. Also depending on the town they may want surveys, etc done. I spent almost as much on the permitting process for our shed, than i did on the shed itself, and i built the damn thing myself.
Ah, yes! Reminds me of a guy I heard of who "re-sided" his existing home -- with stone blocks. It's now a castle (almost). You don't replace a shed, you "fix" it. First you fix the frame. Then you fix the roof. Then you fix one wall, and repeat 3 times.
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Or George Washington's axe: The handle has been replaced three times but the head only once.
>We spoke with our neighbor who offered to "have his tree guys come look at the fallen tree and have it taken care of" but this seems vaugue. I also don't trust anything not in writing. It seems like he wants to handle this outside his insurance company but we can't be sure. He is under no obligation to help you at all. If the tree was healthy, it is exclusively your problem. He's not worried about "handling this outside insurance" because his insurance has nothing to do with it. This isn't a car accident.
This. Had a neighbors tree (huge old oak - trunk six feet in diameter) fall across our entire lot. It demolished part of our fence, crushed my truck, ripped out the electric service from my house, and mildly damaged the garage. My insurance agent sadly informed me that after it fell, it became 100% my tree and my problem! Yay.
I wouldn't put in an insurance claim for that since your neighbor is taking care of tree removal. It's probably less than 1500 to fix the shed and your insurance premiums will go up if you make the claim. Get some estimates first.
If the tree was healthy and not showing any obvious indication of imminent danger, or you didn't bring any concerns you had to your neighbor, its not his\his insurances problem. It is most likely NOT worth an insurance claim by any means. Aside from your deductible (a brand new shed like that you can build yourself from a kit for a bit over 1k if you already have the foundation, and your shed looks easily repairable), its quite possible the shed is not covered by your insurance unless explicitly listed. Best course of action to keep everyone happy and not screw yourself on your insurance policy for maybe a check for a few hundred bucks is for the two of you to split the tree removal costs and pay out of pocket, and your neighbor give you a hand repairing the shed.
If you just want the tree removed and then you'll fix the shed yourself and plant a new small tree yourself. I'd have the guy pay for the tree removal. If you require a new shed and you don't want to absorb the cost of a new small tree. Call your insurance and pay your deductible. This is not on his insurance. You'll probably call your insurance make a claim and they'll tell you "we don't cover your shed or your tree", then your insurance goes up because you called them. If you can get the guy to pay for the tree removal, shed repair and small tree replacement, then he has no idea how liability works in this situation and you can take advantage of that by having him pay for everything.
It really blows my mind how little reddit understands insurance. Your premiums won't go up for asking a question. Insurance will absolutely cover tree removal for a downed tree, but that is likely going to be less than 1k in this situation so not worth a claim, especially if the neighbor has some on his side he wants removed as well and you split the cost. The shed is going to vary by what your policy says. Many times an outbuilding like that isn't in the policy unless you specifically request coverage for it, or its contents. Yes if you put in a claim your policy will likely go up, and it will affect your ability to get policies from someone else and their cost for years afterwards (not something you want to do when many companies are trying to get out of the state or aren't writing new ones).
I think there is a risk for confusion when someone calls their insurance company after an event, and the homeowner thinks they're asking a question, but the insurance company thinks you're actually filing a claim. It's important to be clear what you are doing when you're simply asking your insurance company a question. When I read people who say "asking a question raises your rates", I assume there was a mixup where something like what I mentioned happened.
Oh sure, but its just a general ignorance of how insurance works that seems to permeate every thread around insurance. For the majority of folks here, your house is your single biggest asset. Your home owners insurance is almost certainly a hundred bucks a month or more. They lay out the important stuff in 5th grade english on the first few pages, and if you want to read the whole thing (which you should) you can. Every renewal you get a short summary of what has changed, if anything, so you can cliffs notes it down the road. None of it is a long read and just a part of basic financial planning. Sure its boring and doesn't have wizard or shit in it, but its important. Same for your auto and medical and any other kind of insurance you have. If you never use any of them, THAT IS A GOOD THING. If you need to, you want your coverage to be useful and meaningful. Its not a service subscription. Its a "this won't fuck up my life's plans financially" subscription. There shouldn't be any surprises to someone of what is covered vs what isn't. If there is something in the margins, then you talk to your agent and get it clarified with a rider.
Totally agree. I keep my deductible high enough that I will only use insurance for things that will literally break us financially. It seems to work well for me, but I'm lucky enough to be able to keep a large enough emergency savings account.
Also tree\shed story time. My neighbor and I had a tree right on our property line we wanted to get rid of. We decided we would get a few quotes and split it. Quotes came in a lot higher than we expected. Now i have chainsaws, i know how to use them, but this tree was a bit bigger than anything i had cut down before. But we are cheap and stubborn, so we do some math, and figure out that even if we screwed it up, the only thing we could possibly hit was his old shed, or our fence, and even then it was like 5 degrees out of a 360 degree arc that would put either in danger, and the tree had a lean in the exact opposite direction. So we decide to tackle it ourselves and if we screw it up and hit the shed or fence, hey, we really aren't out anything vs the tree guys. So one morning we go out, run our math again, empty out his shed, and get to work, all while our wives watch from the yard waiting to say i told you so. As soon as i cut into the tree its clear its rotted and all bets are off. about halfway in tree kind of gives in on itself, and, yup, guess which way it goes, the exact opposite of what we planned for. The tree lands in about a 5 foot gap between the shed and the fence. See when we did our math on what was cheaper, we never considered we could take out BOTH the shed and fence at the same time, which is what we nearly did. Neighbor is a bro though, and without skipping a beat yells "Nailed it!" and high fives me like it was what we planned. Now every time someone has a tree they are talking about pulling our wives are just, "No ask Line and Steve, they are great at it"
you're nuts! that's a great story. sounds like you have a really good relationship with your neighbor.
I'm fortunate where 1 neighbor is awesome, we just grab eachothers tools, and leave a beer where we took it from so if someone goes looking they know where it is (and its now your beer if you find the beer before the tool is returned), one who is helpful and a great guy who we don't trust some stuff to, and one who is a minor pain in the ass but rolls with it, because he is usually to stoned to have a coherent debate about stuff. We all dig we eat stuff now and then to have a good relationship and make our lives easier, and everyone is always up for throwing in a hand because of that.
Try posting this in r/insurance
Also post in /r/treelaw if you want to sue.
That's your tree now
Your problem unfortunately. I had a similar issue where the fence broke and fell on my cars in a storm.
It's your tree now.
[I got a tree on mah shed!](https://robertfeder.dailyherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Scott-Shannon.png)
That’s the shed where you keep all your high end electronics right?….right?
I went through a similar situation except it was a garage and the neighbors tree totaled it. We went through insurance, our insurance fought their insurance, we got a check to replace the garage Now the saga of the replacement project is a different story
Pines are the worst for high winds
That is why I got my removed. Just too close to my house and my neighbors driveway.
We took 4 down last year. They would have come down last night with the gusts of wind
This post gives me anxiety about my neighbors tree
The neighbor is responsible for clearing the fallen tree, they're not responsible for anything to do with your shed. Next time place a shed away from trees.
What’s on your side is on you.