Equine Insurance Question--special circumstances....

[Guilherme]

[QUOTE=One Two Three;8104751]
YES, I understand that in their eyes he is worth $1. My question is HOW to prove his worth. As the broadstone lady put it, I have to prove the horse I traded was worth X amount. But she wasn’t very helpful in telling me how to do that aside from showing receipts. Except there are no receipts because I didn’t pay to train the last horse (just as I don’t plan to pay to train this one either)…

Obviously getting the horse to shows will help, but seeing as the horse is barely past his 30 day let down off track, we’re a little ways off from that happening. I guess maybe I just need to self insure until he’s gotten a bit of a show record and some ‘worth’ to be insured.[/QUOTE]

You misunderstand. It’s not just worth $1 in their eyes, it’s worth $1 in the eyes of your bank, a credit rating agency, the IRS, the state personal property tax department, and the rest of the world. That’s what you put on the Bill of Sale. I understand why you did that; but once you did that you put yourself in the position of having to attack your own valuation.

If someone like a tax collector wanted to show it was more than $1 they would have to prove it.

So now you have to prove that it’s actually worth more than $1. That means you have build the value that you want the horse to have. It’s likely that it will take some time to do that with training, showing, etc. There’s no “magic wand” that you waive to make something worth more.

If you want an analogy, think of it as “sweat equity.”

As far as demonstrating the value of a horse you no longer have I’m not sure how you do that if you don’t have any “paper” demonstrating that you did train, show, exhibit, etc.

I understand your problem; I really do. I also understand that there are only very limited ways to demonstrate the horse has more value than the $1 you said it was worth when you bought it.

G.

[coloredhorse]

Even for a trade, you should have a BoS that provides a value for the respective horses. If not, can you retroactively write one up with the owner of the horse you traded?

Alternatively, you might consider providing a “self appraisal” based on comparable sales figures. I did this some years ago to get a freebie insured; I was, a the time, a licensed farm/livestock appraiser and the insurer accepted my valuation despite the obvious conflict of interest.

[drawstraws]

For the horse you traded, write up a summary describing the horse in detail: Breed, age, what you did with it, what your traininsg consisted of, what skills the horse had (for example, is a safe trail horse, could jump quietly around a 3’0" course, has a lead change, shows at local shows, etc.), any show record/results you can think of (what type of shows it’s done, what kind of placings) - as much info as you can put into writing to say “This is why the horse is worth this value”. You shouldn’t necessarily need receipts, just give the company a clear description of the horse to show why the value is accurate. You can also look on sale sites such as dreamhorse, equine.com, etc. and look for comparable horses (same general age, breed, level of training, etc.) to see what people are asking for them - if it’s in the same ballpark, that will help. I do this all the time to help establish values for horses.