Don't let your kid's neighbor housesit without the proper insurance

Two years ago, my husband's job took him on a temporary assignment of 5 months to Prague to finish up a large computer project for the Czech government. Of course it was the opportunity of a lifetime to go with him and I figured a way to take leave from my job (...no loss if they fired me anyway) to join him in this amazing city, which was untouched by the destruction left behind in WWII.

Siteseeing aside, we asked the 20 year old son of a neighbor to "housesit" while we were away. What's the worst that can happen, spilled beer? We felt better withsome living in the house and we could avoid that expensive vacant home insurance, or so we thought. Because we had someone to stay in the house we had no idea we would not rely on our current homeowners insurance policy which was paid up until the end of the year.

While we were away (in the 4th month) a large tulip poplar tree fell on the house during a windstorm. Jason acted quickly to get the hole repaired using the credit card we had left him, but I had to fly home to see to the contractor arrangments etc. The claim we submitted to the insurance company for over $40,000 was totally denied because they told us we did not have the right insurance on the house. We had needed to write a special policy why we were away called a landlord tenant policy (also called a tenant boarder policy).

As you can guess, we had no idea we needed to do this and didn't even think to call our agent. It was a total disater and all the extra money my husband made by taking the overseas assignment quickly was eaten up in this massive repair.