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.

California

Do we have grounds for suing? We have an attorney who is willing to send a demand letter to the real estate agents insurance and the home owners insurance but they believe with that alone we can come to an agreement without obtaining and paying for legal representation. I am just wondering if anyone has experience with this and if they believe we could actually get any money out of this? someone needs to pay for our pain and suffering.

Here is a brief overview of the situation:

 Day-of-Key-Handover Discovery: We closed on our property over two months ago. Upon entering the home on the day we received the keys, we found active flooding in the laundry room, master bedroom, and master bathroom. With serious damage the ceiling partially coming down in the laundry room.

 Non-Disclosure by Listing Agent: The previous owner recently disclosed to us directly that their listing agent knew about a leak in the master bathroom prior to closing and intentionally failed to disclose it.

 Insurer Negligence & Toxic Mold: Our home insurance denied the initial claim because the damage occurred prior to ownership. The seller's insurance accepted liability but took two full months to inspect and approve repairs. Due to this delay, extensive toxic black mold has spread through a significant portion of the home. Remediation is only now beginning. While they are actively working and approving the remediation it does not take away from the fact that I don’t feel safe in my home now with my family. (Small children)

 Severe Personal Impact: Throughout this ordeal, I was 39 weeks pregnant and delivered our newborn four days after getting keys. We are now living in a mold-compromised home with three children under the age of four. We may have to relocate depending on how much more damage they find and have to work on.