What is everyone’s experience with Hartford insurance? what’s the good, bad, and the ugly?
Has anyone ever had to do a loss of use claim? If so, how did it end? I’m trying to decide if its worth doing loss of use or not on my policy. Thanks in advance.
Don’t do it. With Loss of Use you’re basically signing over your horse to the insurance company and they can choose to do whatever they want with the horse including sending it to auction.
Knew a horse diagnosed with a neck issue that made him unrideable - permanent pasture pet which the owner was fine with. Insurance agency (no idea who the policy was through) would only pay the claim if horse was euthanized (bill was low five figures for hospital stay, multiple diagnostics, etc., etc., etc.). Owner was devasted but had no choice - couldn’t afford that hefty bill. I fed him his last meal. It sucked.
I’ve never heard anything good about Loss of Use. Be very careful and READ your policy thoroughly.
Yes and no. Yes, if you want to get paid out on Loss of Use, the insurance company dictates what happens to the horse.
If you want to maintain control over what happens to your horse, you forfeit the LoU claim. But then why pay for it?
So, I had a friend who had a lovely horse that had kissing spines that went downhill with all kinds of physical and mental issues due to pain. Loss of use policy was paid out on and the horse became the possession of the insurance company. Horse was sent by insurance to a lower level auction where a rescue picked him up. Rescue thinks they have quite a find at the “pens” and adopts him to someone. That person had no clue what the history was, just that she had scored a lovely horse from the rescue. To make a long story short, the horse reared and flipped over on the new owner. Original owner finds out and is incensed someone got hurt on a horse that was a LOU claim and most likely should have been euthanized. What a mess. Insurance company squeezed that last few bucks out of this horse and as is normally the case, his history did not follow and someone now has their life changed forever. Unlucky story for sure.
To stop this happening, in England, when a loss of use claim effects a horse it is freeze branded on their saddle area a letter which indicates the insurance company, and a number. That number ties back to the original policy and anyone who gets that horse can call the insurance company and find out what that loss of use was for. It is a huge red flag on the left side just below and behind the withers where that saddle would go.
I found personally the loss of use is very expensive and many still have a lot of exclusions and want extensive PPE info etc. I did not find it worthwhile for what my normal horse purchase costs. Sorry such a long post, but I wanted to point out that there is that downside to not knowing what will become of the horse.
It’s rarely worth it to have loss of use insurance. I know a few people who carry loss of use for fertility on breeding stallions, but that’s about it.
The coverage is usually very expensive, and not super easy to get full coverage on. They will scrutinize your PPE x-rays/ultrasounds and give you a list of exclusions.
Then you have to read the fine print about what happens when a claim pays out. The default is they pay the stated percentage of value and take possession of the horse. A few companies offer a secondary option where you elect a 50% payout and keep the horse.
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