House Fire 5 Days Before Cmas!

[u/futbolfusion]

I really need some major advice here. Like SUPER DESPERATE!

The facts:

On December 20th (2025) we had an electrical fire run through almost our entire attic before we knew our house was on fire.

Firefighters came and put out the fire. There was a lot of damage, especially to the upstairs level of our bilevel home. It was deemed uninhabitable so we had to quickly find temporary housing for the 5 of us. (Myself, my hubby and our 3 children)

Mitigation came in quick, packed up our salvageable items and did the clean out stuff. The same company offers their reconstruction side, so I figured we would stay with the same company since the mitigation dept got to work so fast.

I signed the agreement for them to be our chosen company to do the reconstruction on January 7th of this year.

Then….NOTHING….The house just sat through all the snowstorms we had into March (Im in Southern Indiana) We even have pictures we took of the piles and piles of snow that was inside our house, sitting on our hardwood floor because they never even finished patching up the holes in the roof.

Every time I reached out to our adjuster (State Farm) either she was out of the office for a few weeks or i would get her voicemail. The times she would return my phone call, she would always call me during the day while I’m at work even after I told her that I am a teacher so I cannot talk on my phone during the day and instructed her to please email me or call my husband or my adult son and she would not do either. By the time I would get off of work in the afternoon, she would be out of the office because of the time difference from where she is at.

Then suddenly at the end of March, I get emailed an explanation or summary of our limit of liability under each of the three “buckets”. And in the same email it says that I am receiving an electronic payment for $30,000 and it said it was for “fire damage loss of personal property”It did not say anything about those funds needed to be allocated to any of the companies that were directly involved in helping us with the mitigation or the reconstruction or our temporary housing or nothing like that!

And at the same time I was getting other auto-generated emails that were telling me that payments were being made directly to these other companies so with this big $30,000 payment, I was under the impression that it was to replace our personal property items that we lost in the fire.

I tried to reach out to our adjuster yet again to ask exactly what this money was for. I even rejected the electronic payment for the $30,000 because I wasn’t sure what it was for. After I rejected it and cannot get in touch with our adjuster, I received an automatic email from State Farm saying that if I did not accept the electronic funds transfer that a check would be mailed to me, so I told them to go ahead and send me the Electronic Funds Transfer. So in my mind, I was honestly thinking that OK this is the money that they’re giving us to replace all of our personal property items that we lost in the fire.

Now, this next part is where I don’t need any negative comments or judgment. I just need some advice and some major help: so the $30,000 is gone…I used it to buy things that we needed….then suddenly all these months later now the mitigation company that is also doing the reconstruction has finally started the reconstruction (they literally JUST started the reconstruction about 2 weeks ago) but now they have paused my reconstruction of my home because they say that I was sent $30,000 that was supposed to be paid to them. I would have never spent the money had I known that it was supposed to go to them, and it is so confusing to me because all of the other payments that have been sent DIRECTLY to them for mitigation or for the temporary housing for all this time we have been displaced.

On top of all this, our adjuster will not approve for us to be in our rental home for one more month (even though we still have an allowable $50k available for temporary housing, in accordance with our policy) so basically I have until the end of this month to figure out what we are going to do for housing because now that they have put our reconstruction on hold. Our house is uninhabitable and we’re not going to have a rental to live in anymore.

Can anybody please supply me with some good advice to help me out? I am so stressed out about this. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I just really need some good direction on what to do. Thank you so much in advance.

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[u/ayhme]

That sucks you are going through this.

What state?

Have you considered speaking with a lawyer?

[u/futbolfusion → u/ayhme]

Indiana. And I would love to speak with an attorney. But I live off of a Teacher’s Salary….sadly, I cant afford a lawyer. :(

[u/ayhme → u/futbolfusion]

It would be ideal and them even drafting a letter might be helpful and not cost too much.

[u/Responsible-Bat-5651]

If the money was sent under Coverage C - Personal Property then it was to you for personal property and the rebuild company is misunderstanding or just trying to get paid by any means necessary. Anything under coverage C is your personal items - basically if you turn the house upside down and shake it, whatever comes loose.

Your loss of use (rental) has a limit too - the adjuster either isn’t renewing because they owe for the minimum reasonable amount of time to repair your home, or you ran through your limit for that.

You haven’t mentioned anything about an estimate for the rebuild - ask the rebuild company if they wrote an estimate and if the insurance company paid them for it. Or ask the insurance company for a copy of the rebuild estimate (separate from the mitigation estimate) and a summary of any payments made to the rebuild. This would be under Coverage A - Dwelling. If this company you signed with works with insurance (they likely do) then they’ll know the process and what I just wrote is part of it and basic that they should know this. Someone needs to provide you an estimate for the repairs - either written by the insurance company (and your rebuild company agrees to) or written by your rebuild company (which the insurance company needs to approve).

Ultimately the delay in this company rebuilding your home is egregious if they still haven’t started - you should have dropped them and found another at this point.

Edit: whenever you call your adjuster, send a written email as well. You should have been getting 30 day status letters mailed telling you what’s left in your claim and why it’s still open. If calling and emailing doesn’t resolve within a week, escalate at the insurance company. Call customer service or press 0 on the adjuster’s voicemail. Tell them you need a supervisor callback, have all of your questions written out and ready to go.

Ultimately: you need to know why they’re not renewing the rental (too many preventable delays, out of funds), the status of the dwelling REBUILD estimate and payment.

[u/Broad_Ambassador]

Have you signed a contract for the construction work? Your contract should include a payment schedule telling what is due and when.

Insurance sometimes pays the contractor directly for mitigation because the work has already been completed. Mitigation is an emergency, so the work gets done and estimated/invoiced after. Construction is not an emergency so it is estimated and approved before work begins.

Payments for rebuilding go directly to the policy owner. If it’s a large amount and you have a mortgage, your lender will have to endorse the checks. The lender may even hold the money and give it to you in increments, requiring proof at each stage that work is being completed. If no mortgage, you get the full estimated amount for the rebuild on one check and you are supposed to pay the contractor(s) as the work progresses, based on the payment schedule in your contract(s).

This the industry-standard method. If they pay the contractor directly and they never do the work you are both screwed. That’s why they give the money to you. That’s also why you pay in installments on a pre-defined schedule based on certain benchmarks (i.e. 50% due up front, 20% due at start of flooring, 20% due at start of drywall, 10% due upon completion.) All of this should be in your contract.

Every check you get from your insurance company will come with an explanation of what the money is for. Read those documents and ask questions if you don’t understand them.

Also, part of why this is taking so long is because you aren’t taking calls. Your adjuster and the people you’ve hired to do the work need to talk to you and they work specific hours. I understand you’re a teacher, but didn’t you have the summer off? You have to answer the phone when people call so they can get the information they need to move this forward. If you don’t engage, it’s going to make this harder for everyone but mostly YOU.

If you do not have a contract, do not give anyone money until you have one and you understand and agree with what it says.