A parent dies, or moves into care, and the house they lived in for forty years goes quiet.

Nobody is in a rush. There is a funeral to get through, a lawyer to see, brothers and sisters to talk to. The house sits there with the heat on and the curtains shut, and everybody assumes it is fine because the insurance is paid up.

Six weeks later a pipe lets go behind a wall.

That is when the family finds out the policy stopped covering the house about a month after it emptied, and that the claim is not going to be paid.

The clock nobody mentions

Most Ontario home insurance policies contain a vacancy clause. If a house sits empty for roughly 30 days without the insurer being told, coverage can be suspended, or voided altogether.

Here is the part that catches people: the policy is still in force on paper. Payments keep coming out. Nothing arrives in the post. Nothing looks wrong at all, right up until the moment something goes wrong and the claim is refused.

Insurers also draw a line most families have never heard of. A home is unoccupied when somebody intends to return and the place is still furnished and heated. It is vacant when nobody is coming back, the contents are going, and it is heading for sale.

An estate home almost always starts as the first and quietly turns into the second, usually without anyone telling the insurer that anything changed.

Make the call this week

Before you sort a single box, before the lawyer, before anyone talks about listing it, phone the insurer.

Tell them plainly: the owner has died, or has moved into care, and the house is now empty. Then ask them what they need from you.

Ask specifically whether you need a vacancy permit or a separate vacant property policy. They are different products at different prices. Vacant coverage often costs noticeably more, and it commonly excludes exactly the things you are worried about, including water damage, vandalism and glass breakage. Better to know that now than to discover it during a claim.

Get the answer in writing. An email from the broker is enough. What you do not want is to be relying on what somebody said on the phone eight months ago.

This conversation costs nothing. Having it late can cost the entire claim.

The one decision that actually matters

Once the insurer knows, there is a practical choice to make about the house itself, and it is the one that decides whether February is expensive.

Either:

  • Keep the heat and the water on, with somebody physically checking the house on a schedule your insurer accepts, or
  • Have the water shut off and the lines drained by a plumber

Do not do half of one and half of the other. That is where the damage happens. A burst pipe in an empty house in February is not a repair, it is a gut job, and an insurer who was never told the house was vacant is entitled to say no.

This one is not theoretical for me.

After the conversations I have had with my own insurance agent, I realized it is imperative to disclose any vacancy, even at a cottage property. I had a frozen pipe in a basement wall in the dead of winter. Thankfully we discovered it within 24 hours. It would have been a horrible situation if we had not. Long absences from a home are risky.

Kathleen

Some insurers want documented visits every three to seven days. Ask what yours requires before you assume a neighbour looking in occasionally will satisfy it.

While you are there

Three small things, none of which take long.

Take the mail in or redirect it. A pile of flyers on the porch tells the whole street the house is empty.

Make it look lived in. Snow cleared, lawn cut, a lamp on a timer. And take the spare key out of the fake rock.

Photograph every room before anything is moved. Not because you distrust your family. Because six months from now somebody will ask where the ring went, and a dated photograph is a kinder answer than a memory.

Being straight with you

We do not check empty houses. It is not a service we provide, and we would not want you relying on us for it.

The people who do it properly are home watch and property check companies, which is a real trade with its own liability cover, and they document each visit in a way an insurer will accept. Your insurance broker will usually know who does it locally.

What we genuinely do, once a home is being prepared for sale, is meet every contractor, let in every crew, walk the property while work is going on, and send photo and video updates as things progress. For an executor out of province that is usually enough that they never need to travel for the preparation stage. It is not the same thing as a scheduled insurance inspection, and we are not going to pretend it is.

If the house is already sitting empty

Call the insurer today. Everything else on your list can wait a day. This cannot.

The fuller version of all of this, including what to ask and what to get in writing, is on our page about what to do when the house is empty. If you are further into it than that, our free guide for executors sets out the whole first year in the order things actually arrive, including probate, the tax deadlines and the point where an executor can be held personally responsible.

And when you are ready to think about the property itself, tell us where you are at. We will walk it with you, document its condition and give you a written value as it stands, at no cost and with no obligation.

General information for Ontario, not legal, insurance or financial advice. Vacancy clauses, notice periods and exclusions differ between insurers and between policies, and the roughly 30 day figure is a common rule rather than a universal one. Only your own insurer or broker can tell you what your policy requires.