Consultation Paper on Insurance Issues for Stratas

Abstract

Insurance is a pressing concern for all homeowners. It is no less important for people whose homes are located within a strata property. But insurance generates some complicated legal issues within strata properties that don’t arise within a single-family home. This is because the one-to-one relationship of homeowner to insurer is refracted in a strata property into a more complex set of relationships involving (at a minimum) strata-lot owners, their insurers, the strata corporation, and its insurers. Experience in British Columbia and elsewhere has shown that legislation is necessary to coordinate these relationships.

The consultation paper has 10 tentative recommendations for reform, which address issues such as expanding the legislative mandate on strata corporations to purchase insurance and expressly allowing a strata corporation to decide to charge back to an owner an amount paid for an insurance deductible, if the owner is responsible for the loss or damage that gave rise to the claim that resulted in payment of the deductible. The consultation paper also contains one more open-ended question for discussion, concerning whether British Columbia should adopt the standard-unit concept, which is a feature of the law in other provinces.

Keywords: strata property, condominium, insurance, property insurance, liability insurance, deductible