Vacancy can affect the contents insurance

A contents insurance on a house that comes to stand empty can have a condition about vacancy (leegstand). Whether that condition exists, and what it requires, stands in the policy or in the insurer's reply. This piece names no number of days after which a house would be too empty. Inventing such a number is exactly the mistake that can touch the cover without your knowing it. In the file you note the insurer, the address, and that you have put the question about vacancy. The question is: the home stands empty, or will soon stand empty; does a condition apply; and what must I do so as not to lose the cover. You invent nothing beyond that question.

Empty here means that no one lives there any longer, not that the chairs have gone. If someone still lives there, you write that, because then vacancy may not be in question. The insurer decides how the word is read in this policy. You take that reading over from the reply. Until the reply exists, you do not cancel the policy in order to save premium. A contents insurance cancelled during an unclear month is a gap, not a tidying-up. Also note whether the buildings cover is insured elsewhere, but do not mix the two policies into one question as if they were one cover. Each policy gets its own letter if the insurer is not the same.

The letter states the facts you know: the death, the address, whether someone still lives there, and the question about the vacancy condition. You ask for a written reply. A telephone conversation you note with the date and the name, and you still ask for confirmation on paper. Ervazo keeps the letter and the reply. It does not send them. Put the reply with the policy, with the date. Write beside it which step the insurer asks for, in their words, without adding a number of days that they have not named. If the insurer states no number of days, that field stays empty. An empty condition is not a licence to ask nothing. The task is precisely the asking and the keeping.

Vacancy can affect the contents insurance. Whether that is so, the file asks the insurer, and the reply is kept. A number of empty days is not named here and should not be invented as well. The policy keeps running until the insurer confirms something else. This is not legal advice. Whether a vacancy condition applies, and which step goes with it, is confirmed by the insurer. The notary does not confirm that cover. The notary may, if the home sits in the distribution, want to know whether the policy is still running. You take that fact from the insurer's reply, not from an assumption.