Paul came into my office mid-40s, weathered hands, work boots held together with duct tape. He didn’t want a quote. He wanted someone to read his policy with him and tell him the truth.
He started by telling me about his brother Jason and sister-in-law Nicole. Their house had burned the year before. Electrical fire in the garage. Everyone got out. The house didn’t.
They had insurance. They’d paid premiums for fifteen years without a claim. It seemed reasonable to assume they were covered.
They weren’t. Not really.
Years earlier, when they’d been renting the house out, their agent had written it on a landlord policy. When they moved back in, no one updated the form. The policy stayed in force. The fire didn’t care.
Landlord policies aren’t built for the people who live in the house. There was no loss-of-use coverage to put the family up while the home was rebuilt — that line item gets replaced with loss-of-rental-income, and Jason and Nicole weren’t collecting rent from themselves. Personal property was capped at $3,000, because landlord forms assume the furniture belongs to a tenant. There was no extended replacement cost to absorb the shortfall between the policy limit and what it actually took to rebuild.
“They thought they had done everything right. But they missed one small detail, and they didn’t have anyone looking out for them who could have caught it.”
Paul looked up at me.
“My insurance isn’t something I want to cheap out on. I just want to know my family’s actually protected, and that someone I can trust is watching out for me.”
We spent two hours together that afternoon. Some changes cost him more. Some just required better documentation of what he already owned. By the end, he knew exactly what he had and exactly what to expect if the worst happened.
When he stood up to leave, he shook my hand.
“I wish my brother had talked to someone like you.”
That’s the conversation Fortified is built around — the one Jason and Nicole never got to have, written down so you can have it before something goes wrong.
