On the kitchen table
Two documents get signed on wet kitchen tables, and both are optional.
A contract signed at your home for $25 or more generally carries a right to cancel within three business days. Assigning your insurance benefits to a contractor is a separate document and is never required. Both get signed in the first hour by people who did not know either.
- 00Separate the two decisionsAuthorising emergency drying today is not the same as signing a rebuild contract.
- 01Look for the notice of cancellationThe seller has to hand you one, in the same language as the contract.
- 02Read the heading of anything elseIf it says assignment of benefits, it moves your claim rather than permitting work.
- 03Photograph everything you signBefore anyone leaves with the paperwork.
Goes to an independent contractor. Nothing is booked until you say so. Calls may be recorded.
The waiver you have to write by hand
The federal cooling-off rule permits a buyer to waive the three days in a genuine emergency, but only by writing a separate dated and signed statement in their own handwriting, describing the situation requiring immediate remedy. A pre-printed box you tick is not what the rule describes.
The awkwardness is the safeguard: nobody writes that out by accident. If someone hands you a paragraph to copy, the rule asks for your description of your emergency, not theirs.
What assigning benefits actually does
It transfers your rights under your own policy, for that loss, to the contractor. They then deal with the insurer and are paid directly, and any dispute becomes theirs to run. It is lawful in many states, it is not required in any of them, and you can authorise work and pay the invoice in the ordinary way instead.
Florida, where the practice was most widespread, now sets out in statute what an assignment agreement must contain and what rights you keep. The existence of that much statutory detail says how contested it became.
Any firm that makes the assignment a condition of turning up is telling you what the document is worth to them. The next firm down the list will not.
What to say instead
That you will authorise emergency mitigation now and read the rest tonight. That is a normal thing to say, it does not delay the drying, and the response to it tells you a great deal about who is standing in your hallway.
Whose signature counts
Not everyone in the room can bind the building.
- 01You own and live hereYours to give or refuse, and refusing costs you nothing with a contractor worth using.
Ask them: is anything here an assignment of benefits, and will you start without it? - 02You own and let it outA tenant cannot assign your policy benefits. A contractor who took their signature has a problem, not you.
- 03You already signedCount business days from the date on the contract and cancel in writing inside them. Keep proof of sending.
- 04You rentYou hold no rights under the owner policy, so you have nothing to assign. Do not sign one.
Goes to an independent contractor. Nothing is booked until you say so. Calls may be recorded.
Where these figures come from
Published by someone other than us. Each link goes to their own words rather than to our summary of them.