New condos scarborough . The insurance company can justifiably burn down the house and there is no need to pay for it! Terri-lynn Robison, a woman from Ontario, stood in her burnt room and couldn’t believe her husband actually started the fire.
Robison said that last year, she and her husband had an argument. She told her husband that their 11-year marriage was over and she began to pack her clothes. Her husband went upstairs and she thought he was leaving, but he returned to his room with a barbecue igniter and lit the sheets. Robinson fled immediately with her dog and mobile phone in her arms. Her husband was arrested that night, charged with arson and ignoring his life, and sentenced to two years and less than a day in prison.
Robison is glad that he ran out of the house in time and was not hurt. However, luck did not continue to accompany her: her insurance company, Allstate, rejected her claim, even though she was the victim of the arson. Allstate said her “VIP” homeowner plan was “invalid” because her husband was also involved in the plan and deliberately started the fire.
Although it sounds unreasonable, from a legal point of view, what Allstate is doing is not illegal. In Ontario, when the victim and the partner are in the same insurance plan, the insurance company can reject the victim’s claim if the partner’s behavior is considered “intentional or criminal”.
The investigation found that what happened to Robinson was not an isolated case. In several cases, partners burn common property and innocent victims not only have to pay for repairs out of their own pocket, but also, worse, may end up homeless.
From the outside, Robinson’s two-story building is as neat and clean as any other house. Nearly a year after the incident, Robinson consciously fulfilled his obligation to shovel snow for the house, mow the lawn and receive mail. But inside the house, the refrigerator is full of maggots. The room gave off a disgusting stench of smoke. It’s moldy in the basement, too. The house is rotting from the inside out and is no longer inhabitable.
Robinson has lived in a women’s shelter for nearly a month. If her insurance claim is approved, she will stay at the hotel until the temporary house is ready, and the insurance company will be responsible for the expenses.
In fact, the insurance company Allstate gave Robinson C $10000, but in a letter issued by the company, it stated that “Allstate is under no obligation to solve this problem.”
The cost of repairing the house is at least about C $160000, which is more than a cook in a nursing home can afford. Until January this year, Robinson was able to pay her home loan, but the cost of renting a house and the cost of a car had pushed her financial situation to the limit. She guessed that the bank might close her property soon. What made her most desperate was that she had to pay the price because she lived in a province where such insurance laws were enforced.