When an accident happens and you aren’t the faulty party, the third party carrier (at fault person) pays for the repair costs and medical bills. In case the recovering expenses from the at fault person’s insurance company is delayed then your insurance amount is needed to pay for the repairs and the bills.
Subrogation/ Subro protects you and your insurance company from paying for a car accident where you weren’t at fault. It allows your insurer to regain the costs including the medical payments, repairs, your deductible, etc from the at-fault driver’s insurance company. A refund received for you and your insurer is termed as a successful subrogation.
If the fault is not clearly defined i.e. if it isn’t 1 party fault then depending on the situation one party won’t be held responsible for paying all the repair costs. A claim has to be filed with the insurer while paying the deductible and the insurer will take the matters in their hand hereon.
The insurance company can choose to subrogate the other party’s insurer to recover some or all of the accident costs if you aren’t at fault entirely in the accident. One will get some or may be all the deductible back if the subro happens. The amount which will be recouped by the laws in each state but much is not needed to be done by the policyholder during subrogation.
Generally the subrogation happens behind the scenes. The insurance companies make a decision on who will pay and for what. It is thus important to always report the accidents to the insurer. If you are planning to take a legal path or making a settlement with another party then you need to inform the insurer as in these conditions the subrogation might be waived. Inform about all the situations where it will involve a waiver of subrogation.
