Insurance claim checklist: every document Palisades fire victims need

Insurance is the highest-leverage workstream in a fire rebuild. Families who document carefully often receive 20–30% more from the same policy than families who don’t — not because the policy changed, but because their adjuster had more to work with.

Here’s every document you should be assembling. Keep them in a single shared Drive folder so your adjuster, your contractor, and your public adjuster (if you have one) can all see the same set.

The 14 essentials

1. Declarations page of your homeowner’s policy — and any earthquake or umbrella riders.

2. Full policy text (not just declarations). Bury this and you bury your code-upgrade leverage.

3. Pre-fire photos of every room, exterior elevation, and outbuilding. Cloud-storage backups are gold.

4. Floor plans or appraisal sketches — even old realtor listings count.

5. Recent appraisals or refis that captured square footage and finish level.

6. Receipts and invoices for renovations, additions, and upgrades in the last 10 years.

7. Specialty inventory for kitchens, theaters, wine cellars, art, custom millwork.

8. Permits + plans from prior remodels (the city has copies if you don’t).

9. Photos of damaged contents before disposal, time-stamped.

10. Contents inventory by room, with replacement-cost estimates.

11. ALE (Additional Living Expense) receipts — every hotel night, every rental, every restaurant meal during displacement.

12. Estimates from licensed contractors for the rebuild scope.

13. Soils + geotech reports if your lot is on a hillside or near a slope.

14. Final scope of loss from the adjuster — read every line, dispute everything that’s wrong.

The three families forget

Code-upgrade documentation. Most policies include a code-upgrade rider (often 10% or 25% of dwelling limit). To use it you need a code analysis showing what current code requires that your old home didn’t have. Class A roof, fire-rated glazing, hardened soffit, seismic upgrades — list each, with the code section, with the cost.

Soft-costs ledger. Architect fees, engineer fees, permit fees, plan-check fees, surveys, soils reports. These are reimbursable but only if you track them.

Pre-fire utility bills. Used to size HVAC and electrical replacements at the right capacity. Lose the bill, lose the argument.

If you want help with any of this, schedule a free consultation — we’ll spend 30 minutes walking through your specific policy and what to push your adjuster on next.