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The Money On Top Of The Number

Short answer: In four of nine states whose rules we read, the insurer must tell you in writing about money owed beyond the settlement. In three of those four, a thirty-day clock to buy and a thirty-three day clock to prove it run from the settlement cheque, and when they expire the money is gone. This article is about nine state instruments and one model regulation, all re-read on 2026-09-02 at the sources listed at the foot, and every quotation, figure and URL in it was re-fetched and checked against those sources again on 2026-09-03. It is not a fifty-state survey and nothing in it should be read as one.

By Anthony Braswell for Quorum Industries LLC, The Autobody Directory · Updated 2026-09-03 · How this was written, and what the machine may not do

How this page was produced: Researched, drafted and checked with AI assistance under human direction, and signed off by the named author. How this site is written

The clock starts when the cheque arrives

Ohio, Hawaii and Illinois all pay the sales tax on a totalled car only if you go and buy another one, quickly, and prove it.

Ohio Adm.Code 3901-1-54(H)(7)(f), read on 2026-09-02:

"If within thirty days of receipt by the claimant of a cash settlement for the total loss of an automobile, the claimant purchases a replacement automobile, the insurer shall reimburse the claimant for the applicable sales taxes incurred on account of the claimant's purchase of the automobile, but not to exceed the amount that would have been payable by the claimant for sales taxes on the purchase of an automobile with a market value equal to the amount of the cash settlement. If the claimant purchases an automobile with a market value less than the amount of the cash settlement, the insurer shall reimburse only the actual amount of the applicable sales taxes on the purchased automobile. If the claimant cannot substantiate such purchase and the payment of such sales taxes by submission to the insurer of appropriate documentation within thirty-three days after receipt of the cash settlement, the insurer shall not be required to reimburse the claimant for such sales taxes. In lieu of reimbursement, the insurer may pay directly the applicable sales taxes to the claimant at the time of the cash settlement."

That is the whole paragraph, and the whole paragraph is the point. The first sentence gives the right. The third sentence takes it away at day thirty-three. The fourth sentence lets the insurer pay the tax at settlement instead and skip the machinery entirely. The paragraph covers sales taxes and no other tax, confirmed against both codes.ohio.gov and the Cornell rendering on 2026-09-03.

Hawaii runs the same clock, at Haw. Rev. Stat. 431:10C-312: thirty days from receipt of the settlement to buy, thirty-three to document, and if the insured cannot substantiate the purchase in that window the insurer "shall not be required to reimburse the insured for the taxes or fee." Illinois runs it too, at 50 Ill. Adm. Code 919.80(c)(3)(A)(i): thirty days to purchase or lease, thirty-three to substantiate, and then "the company shall not be required to reimburse the insured for the sales taxes or transfer or title fees."

Three states, three identical clocks, to the day. The structural cruelty is that the person subject to this clock is by definition a person without a car. Thirty days is the window in which she is finding a way to get to work and arguing about whether the valuation is right. Nothing in any of the three texts tolls the clock while a valuation dispute runs.

Worse, in all three states a second and longer clock runs beside it and is easily confused with it. Ohio Adm.Code 3901-1-54(H)(7) requires that "An insurer shall notify the first party claimant of any rights to renegotiate the settlement if a comparable vehicle is not available for purchase within thirty-five days of receipt of the settlement." Thirty-five days for the price. Thirty to buy and thirty-three to prove, for the tax. In Ohio all of them start from the same cheque, and the longest one is the one the insurer has to tell you about.

What the notice says, and the sentence that switches it off

Ohio's notice duty sits at Adm.Code 3901-1-54(H)(7)(g). Here it is in full, read on 2026-09-02:

"An insurer that settles a total loss claim shall provide written notice to the claimant of the right to reimbursement of applicable sales tax as specified in paragraph (H)(7)(f) of this rule. The notice shall be issued to the claimant simultaneously with the conveyance of the settlement check to the claimant. If an insurer elects to pay the applicable sales taxes directly to the claimant at the time of the cash settlement in lieu of reimbursement as provided in paragraph (H)(7)(f) of this rule, the insurer is not required to provide written notice of the claimant's right to sales tax reimbursement."

The third sentence matters and is frequently dropped. Ohio's notice duty is conditional: it applies only where the insurer took the reimbursement route. An insurer that simply pays the tax at settlement owes no notice, which is defensible, because a notice about a reimbursement right from a carrier that has already paid would be a notice about nothing. That the paragraph has three sentences, and that the second is the one requiring the notice to travel with the cheque, was confirmed sentence by sentence against two independent renderings on 2026-09-03.

Hawaii's version is a statute rather than a regulation, its notice duty carries no such carve-out on its face, and it requires the claim form as well as the notice. Haw. Rev. Stat. 431:10C-312(d), read on 2026-09-02:

"Written notice of the payment procedure outlined in this section shall be communicated to the insured at the time of settlement, together with any form required by the insurer for applying for the reimbursement."

Hawaii does give its insurers the same in-lieu escape Ohio gives, at 431:10C-312(c), which lets the carrier pay the excise tax and ownership fee directly at settlement. What Hawaii does not do is switch the notice off when the carrier takes it.

Illinois does the same job in a different shape, and it is the only one of the four that writes the consumer's notice itself. 50 Ill. Adm. Code 919.80(c) requires the insurer to deliver the contents of Exhibit A "within 7 days after this determination," before the money arrives. Exhibit A is a plain-English pamphlet addressed to the reader in the second person, printing the Illinois Department of Insurance consumer line in its opening section, ahead of the numbered items. Its item 6 says:

"If within 30 days of a cash settlement, you can prove that you have purchased another vehicle, the company must pay the applicable sales tax, transfer and title fees in an amount equivalent to the value of the total loss vehicle. If you purchase a vehicle with a market value less than the amount previously settled upon, the company must pay you only the amount of sales tax that you actually incurred and include transfer and title fees.

Your insurance company must give you written notice of this procedure."

California is the fourth, and it does something none of the other three does: it makes the insurer disclose money the claimant can go and collect from the state. Under 10 CCR 2695.8(b)(1)(A), where the claimant keeps the wreck, "The insurer shall disclose in writing to the claimant that notice of the salvage retention by the claimant must be provided to the Department of Motor Vehicles and that this notice may affect the loss vehicle's future resale and/or insured value. The disclosure must also inform the claimant of said claimant's right to seek a refund of the unused license fees from the Department of Motor Vehicles." No request is required.

That is four states out of the nine whose claim-settlement instruments we read in full on 2026-09-02 and re-checked on 2026-09-03. The other five, Washington, North Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and New York, impose no comparable duty about taxes or fees in the instrument read. For Washington, North Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and New York that absence was tested with a control: in each instrument we first listed the written notice, statement and explanation duties the rule does impose, found several in every one of the five, and then found nothing about a right to taxes or fees. An instrument whose writing duties we can enumerate is an instrument in which we would have seen one more. We are not claiming that four is the number of states requiring this notice. Nine instruments were read and forty-one states were not opened, so every count on this page is a count over the nine.

And here is the strongest thing that can be said against everything above, and it stops those five from being a scandal. The drafting ancestor of this language does not need a notice, because it does not condition the money. NAIC Model Regulation 902, the Unfair Property/Casualty Claims Settlement Practices Model Regulation as published in the July 1997 NAIC compilation, adopted in 1990 and amended in 1991, provides at Section 8.A(2) that an insurer electing a cash settlement bases it on the cost "to purchase a comparable automobile including all applicable taxes, license fees and other fees incident to transfer of evidence of ownership of a comparable automobile." No purchase requirement. No thirty-day window. No forfeiture. That phrase, other fees incident to transfer of evidence of ownership, reappears almost word for word in the Ohio, Kentucky and California instruments read here, so this is an ancestor and not a curiosity.

We read the model in full and it contains no sales tax notice duty of any kind. That absence was tested against an instrument that plainly imposes notice duties when it wants them: Section 7 alone requires the insurer to advise a claimant of acceptance or denial in writing, to give the claimant written notice of a policy limitation, and to notify a claimant in writing that the matter may be reviewed. The same read that surfaced those surfaced no sales tax notice, which is exactly what you would expect of an instrument that pays the money unconditionally. A state that follows the model needs no notice rule at all. The silence of Washington, North Carolina and Kentucky is therefore not a gap in those states but the model working as designed, because all three put the taxes and fees into the settlement without asking the claimant to do anything first. New York is silent about tax altogether, which is a different thing, and is dealt with below.

The notice duty exists, in other words, in precisely the states that broke from the model and made the money conditional. It is a patch on a problem the model does not have.

Florida took the condition and skipped the notice

Florida is the counterexample that stops that pattern from becoming a law. Fla. Stat. 626.9743(9), read on 2026-09-02:

"If sales tax will necessarily be incurred by a claimant upon replacement of a total loss or upon repair of a partial loss, the insurer may defer payment of the sales tax unless and until the obligation has actually been incurred."

Be precise about what that does and does not do. It is a deferral, not a forfeiture. There is no thirty-day window in the Florida statute and no day on which the entitlement dies. The consequence is simply that a Florida claimant has to go back to the insurer after buying, and nothing in the statute requires anyone to tell her so.

We read the whole of section 626.9743 asking specifically whether it requires written notice of a tax right anywhere. It does not. The only subsections touching tax are (5)(a), (5)(b) and (9), and the first two merely make the tax payable "if applicable pursuant to subsection (9)." That absence is a finding, because the same statute does impose written duties in the same breath: subsection (8) requires notice before terminating payment for previously authorised storage, and the notice must give the insured 72 hours to remove the vehicle; subsection (7) requires the insurer to supply the insured a copy of the estimate the settlement is based on; and subsections (5)(c) and (6) require the basis of a settlement or a betterment deduction to be explained to the claimant in writing on request. An instrument that surfaces four writing duties in a document is an instrument capable of surfacing a fifth.

The states that simply pay, and the wreck in the driveway

Washington has the strongest formulation of the nine. WAC 284-30-391(4)(e), read on 2026-09-02:

"As part of the settlement amount, include all applicable government taxes and fees that would have been incurred by the claimant if the claimant had purchased the loss vehicle immediately prior to the loss. These taxes and fees must be included in the settlement amount whether or not the claimant retains or subsequently transfers ownership of the loss vehicle."

Two devices in two sentences. The measure is counterfactual, which removes any argument about what a replacement actually cost. The condition is abolished outright. The claimant does nothing and asks for nothing.

That paragraph survives the amendment Washington adopted on 2026-08-18 in matter R 2025-05, which takes effect 2026-10-18. The adoption order reprints subsection (4)(e) in these same words, read on 2026-09-03, so the sentence above is what a Washington claimant is owed both now and after the amended rules come into force. The order and its dates are set out in the currency note below.

California reaches the same place by a different route, and 10 CCR 2695.8(b)(1) ends with a sentence worth knowing: the settlement includes the taxes and one-time transfer fees, plus "the license fee and other annual fees to be computed based upon the remaining term of the loss vehicle's current registration," and then, flatly, "This procedure shall apply whether or not a replacement automobile is purchased."

Now set the three of them against each other on one narrow question, because it is the same fact and they give three different answers. What is a claimant who keeps the wreck owed in tax?

Three states, three answers, one question. That is a real check on anyone who tells you this area of law has a settled shape.

Kentucky adds a fourth arithmetic and a quiet asymmetry. Under 806 KAR 12:095 Section 7(1)(b), read on 2026-09-02, a cash settlement includes "all applicable taxes, license fees (if these fees cannot be refunded by the Transportation Cabinet), and other fees incident to transfer of evidence of ownership of a comparable motor vehicle." The parenthetical lets the carrier subtract any licence fee the state will refund. We read the whole regulation and it says nothing to the consumer about claiming that refund. That regulation is not shy about writing generally: it requires written notice where an insurer needs more time to investigate, written letters of explanation while an investigation runs long, and written notice before a limitation period expires. The read that surfaced those surfaced nothing about the refund. Set that beside California, where the insurer must tell the claimant in writing where the refund is. Same money, opposite policy, and the consumer who does not know is out the same amount in both states.

The fees do not travel together

"Taxes and fees" gets written as though it were one item. In every instrument we read they are drafted separately, and the sets do not match.

The Ohio row is the one to keep. Ohio's cash-settlement paragraph, (H)(7)(f), covers sales taxes and nothing else. Title, licence and transfer fees appear at (H)(6)(c), which requires the insurer to "Pay all applicable taxes, license fees, and other fees incident to transfer of evidence of ownership of the automobile at no cost to claimant" only where it hands over a replacement car. In Ohio the fees follow the car, not the money, and the written notice at (H)(7)(g) is a notice about sales tax alone.

The others diverge in every direction. Hawaii covers general excise tax and the certificate of ownership fee, and does not mention registration. Illinois covers sales tax and transfer and title fees, and does not mention registration. North Carolina covers sales tax and registration fees, and does not mention title or transfer. California computes the licence fee pro rata on the unexpired term, treating it as a part-used asset. Kentucky subtracts whatever the state will refund. Every row in this paragraph was verified against its instrument on 2026-09-03.

New York is silent about tax, and not silent about notice

11 NYCRR 216.7 is New York's total-loss and physical-damage settlement rule. We read the entire section on 2026-09-02 and it contains no reference to sales tax, title fees, transfer fees or registration fees. That was retested term by term on 2026-09-03, with the same result.

That silence means something, because this is the most disclosure-heavy of the nine rules we read. The same section requires a prescribed Notice of Rights letter when negotiations fail; requires the insurer to provide, "no later than the date of payment of the claim, a detailed copy of its calculation of the insured vehicle's total loss value," with no request needed; requires a written explanation of any element unresolved beyond thirty calendar days, updated every thirty days; and prints at 216.7(d)(3) the exact wording of the Department of Financial Services complaint notice, down to the department's four office addresses.

It even contains a duty of the very kind this article is about. On a stolen vehicle, 216.7(f) provides that "it shall be the duty of the insurer at the time of notification of loss to advise the insured of his right under the policy to be reimbursed for transportation expenses," confirmed in writing. So New York does require an insurer to volunteer that there is more money available than the claimant may realise. It just never says it about tax.

The mirror: the car that was repaired instead

Ask the same question about a repaired car and it returns as diminished value: is the owner owed the gap between what the car was worth before and what a repaired car is worth after?

This is two questions, not one, and they must not be run together. A first-party claim is made against your own insurer. A third-party claim is made against the insurer of the driver who hit you. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court put the distinction plainly in a footnote to McGilloway v. Safety Insurance Company, SJC-13053, decided October 19, 2021, read on 2026-09-02:

"In a first-party insurance claim, the claimant seeks compensation from his or her own insurance provider. In a third-party automobile insurance claim, the type at issue here, the claimant seeks compensation from another person's insurance provider -- typically, the insurer of the other party in a collision."

Every sentence below says which one it is.

First party, Georgia, yes. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Mabry, 274 Ga. 498, 556 S.E.2d 114, No. S01A0982, decided November 28, 2001, disposed of as "Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur." The plaintiffs pleaded that they "had made first-party physical damage claims" against their own carrier, and the court decided the case on that footing. The court's summary of its holding:

"the policies issued by State Farm obligate it to compensate its policyholders for that loss of value, notwithstanding repairs that return the vehicle to pre-loss condition in terms of appearance and function, if the repairs do not return the vehicle to its pre-loss value; and State Farm is obligated to assess that element of loss along with the elements of physical damage when a policyholder makes a general claim of loss."

The final clause carries a condition that is often stripped off in retelling, and the clause before it is why Mabry belongs in an article about notice at all. The plaintiffs pleaded that State Farm "had failed to inform its policyholders of that coverage," and the court answered:

"Nothing in the insurance policy requires the insured to assert a right to recover any particular element of damage. If the policy does not require the insured to claim separately such items as damage to tires or damage to bodywork, it stands to reason that the policy does not require a separate claim for diminution in value."

A state supreme court held that the duty to identify an element of the consumer's loss sits on the payer. That is the same duty Ohio, Hawaii, Illinois and California impose by rule, arrived at through the contract instead.

First party, Florida, no. Siegle v. Progressive Consumers Ins. Co., No. SC01-1219, decided May 23, 2002. Siegle was insured by Progressive and sued under her own collision coverage. The Florida Supreme Court answered the certified question, which asked whether such a policy obliges the insurer "to compensate the insured in money for any diminution in market value after the insurer completes a first-rate repair which returns the vehicle to its pre-accident level of performance, appearance, and function," in the negative, and approved the decision of the court below.

First party, South Carolina, no. Schulmeyer v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., Opinion No. 25612, filed March 24, 2003, answering in the negative a certified question about "an insured making a comprehensive or collision claim." The court held that "The policy, read as a whole, defines repair or replacement as restoring the vehicle to pre-accident mechanical function and condition and not as restoring value."

First party, Massachusetts, no. Given v. Commerce Ins. Co., 440 Mass. 207, decided October 7, 2003, on part seven of the state's standard policy, which is the insured's own optional collision coverage. The question reported to the court was:

"Whether Massachusetts automobile insurers must pay claims of policyholders for so-called 'inherent diminished value,' pursuant to Part 7 (Collision) coverage under the Standard Automobile Insurance Policy mandated by the Commissioner of Insurance?"

The court "granted Commerce's application for direct appellate review, and now answer the reported question in the negative," and remanded the case to the Superior Court.

Third party, Massachusetts, yes, eighteen years later, same court, same standard policy. McGilloway holds that inherent diminished value damages, if adequately proved, are recoverable under part 4, the third-party property damage coverage, provided the claimant establishes both that the vehicle suffered the loss and its amount; and on that holding the court vacated the allowance of summary judgment for the insurers on the contract claims, affirmed summary judgment for the insurers on the unfair practices claims, and remanded, so the judgment itself paid nobody. The court distinguished Given on three grounds, the sharpest being that the "will never pay more than what it would cost to repair or replace" cap that defeated Given "applies only to damages due under 'Parts 7, 8 and 9,' and thus does not bear on our analysis of part 4 in these cases."

So in the one jurisdiction where both halves of the question have been answered by the same court on the same standard policy, the answers are opposite. The identical loss to the identical car produces a payment or no payment according to which side of the collision the owner was on. Anyone citing Mabry for a general first-party right is citing one state against three that we verified. Anyone citing Given or Siegle to defeat a third-party claim is citing the wrong half of the question. We are not claiming that three against one is how the country divides. Given itself says a tally across jurisdictions is of limited utility, because the policy wording and the regulatory background differ from state to state.

Two things cut hard against the consumer here, and they belong in the same passage as the finding. First, the courts that said no did not say it on policy grounds; they said the words did not reach that far, and two of them said explicitly that comparison across states is unreliable. Given recorded that "A numerical tally of results in other jurisdictions would suggest that the current trend is to reject claims for inherent diminished value," and then agreed with the insurer that analysis of such cases "is of limited utility, as the determination of what is or is not covered under an automobile policy is driven by the precise language of the policy in question and the statutory and regulatory background governing automobile insurance in that jurisdiction." Schulmeyer distinguished Mabry not on wording but on Georgia law, holding that the Georgia court "relied on public policy exceptions inherent in Georgia insurance contracts which are not applicable under South Carolina law." Second, McGilloway held that the insurers who had refused to pay these very claims were nonetheless not liable for unfair practices, because they had relied on a "plausible, although ultimately incorrect, interpretation of its policy." The court that said the money was owed also said the refusal to pay it was not unfair.

One thread does tie the two halves of this article together, and it is in the Massachusetts policy text McGilloway quotes: part 4 provides that third-party "Damages include any applicable sales tax and the costs resulting from the loss of use of the damaged property." The tax question and the diminished value question turn out to live in the same sentence of the same form.

What to do, in the states named

Nothing here is asserted for a state not named in it. And this page makes no claim about whether any of these notices actually arrives: we located no enforcement action under any of the four notice provisions, and nobody publishes a rate at which they are delivered, read or acted on.

Ohio. Ask for the written notice at (H)(7)(g). It must be issued with the settlement cheque, unless the insurer already paid the sales tax at settlement, in which case check the cheque instead. Then buy within thirty days of receiving the settlement and give the insurer proof within thirty-three. The cash route covers sales tax only. If you are still arguing about the valuation, note that the renegotiation clock runs thirty-five days and the tax clocks thirty and thirty-three, from the same cheque.

Hawaii. You are entitled to written notice of the payment procedure at the time of settlement, together with the form you need to claim. Thirty days to buy, thirty-three to document, general excise tax and certificate of ownership fee.

Illinois. You should receive the Exhibit A pamphlet within seven days of the total-loss determination, before the money. It is written for you and prints the Department of Insurance consumer line. Illinois covers sales tax and transfer and title fees, thirty days to buy or lease, thirty-three to prove, and 919.80(c)(3)(A)(ii) requires the claim form to come with the notice or at settlement.

California. The taxes and one-time transfer fees go in, the licence fee is prorated over the remaining term of your registration, and it applies whether or not you buy a replacement. If you keep the salvage, ask for the written disclosure about seeking a refund of unused licence fees from the DMV.

Washington. You do not have to buy anything. The taxes and fees go into the settlement whether or not you keep the wreck, measured by what you would have paid buying your own car back the day before the loss. That is the rule now and it is the rule the state readopted in the order taking effect on 2026-10-18.

North Carolina. You get sales tax and registration fees as part of the settlement, but not if you keep the salvage. Under .0418(i), if you ask, the total loss payment must be accompanied by a written statement of the estimates, evaluations and deductions and their sources.

Kentucky. You get taxes and transfer fees with no purchase required, but licence fees only where the Transportation Cabinet will not refund them. If the Cabinet will refund them, claim the refund yourself. Nothing in the rule tells you that.

Florida. The insurer may hold the sales tax until you actually incur it, so you have to go back to them when you buy. Nothing in the statute requires anyone to tell you that.

New York. The rule says nothing about tax, so that argument is a contract argument about what actual cash value means. It does require an unprompted breakdown of the total loss valuation no later than the date of payment, and a written explanation of anything unresolved past thirty days.

On a repaired car. In Georgia, Mabry obliges a first-party insurer to assess diminution in value as part of a general claim of loss, without a separate claim. In Massachusetts, if the other driver was at fault, McGilloway makes inherent diminished value recoverable under part 4 on proof of both the loss and its amount, though the judgment in that case vacated summary judgment against those claimants and sent the cases back without awarding anything; under your own collision coverage, Given says no.

What we could not verify, and the walls we hit

Every quotation and figure above was re-fetched from its primary source on 2026-09-02 and matched against this text, and re-fetched again by a separate adversarial pass on 2026-09-03. The following did not survive that test, or was never reached, and is therefore absent.

Sources

All read on 2026-09-02, and all re-fetched and confirmed on 2026-09-03, except the two Washington rule-making documents, which were first read on 2026-09-03.

Corrections

This log opens with this article. Corrections will be added here with the date and what changed.

1. The Washington sourcing caveat was false, and it is cut rather than softened. This article previously said, of the amended Washington claims handling rules: "I did not reach the Washington State Register filing itself, and the Office of the Insurance Commissioner rulemaking page I read on 2026-09-03 listed no 2026 rule against chapter 284-30 WAC. That effective date therefore rests on a trade report and not on a primary document." Both sentences are wrong. The Commissioner's own rule-making page for matter R 2025-05 carries the adoption date, the effective date and a link to the adoption order, and it was read on 2026-09-03. The CR-103P rule-making order itself was read on 2026-09-03 at https://www.insurance.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08/r2025-05-cr103.pdf. The October 2026 effective date rests on that order, which is a primary document, and the caveat is replaced by the citation. A published caveat that wrongly says we could not reach a primary document is worse than no caveat: it understates our own work and it is checkable by anyone. 2. The trade report is dropped as the basis of the Washington currency note, and its subsection attribution with it. The note previously relayed a trade report as stating that the rule "amends WAC 284-30-391 at subsections (3) and (7)," and added that "Subsection (4)(e), the one quoted here, is not among the subsections that report names." Both sentences are now unnecessary and the second was doing work it could not support. The order supersedes the relay: it amends fifteen sections of chapter 284-30 WAC, it reprints 284-30-391(4)(e) in the words this article quotes, and the nondelegable accuracy duty added by the amendment sits at WAC 284-30-380(7), which is a different rule from the one quoted here. The primary text replaces the secondary relay throughout, and one sentence has been added to the Washington passage in the body so that a reader meets the currency point where the rule is quoted rather than only in the notes. 3. Voice. This was the only article of the eight written in the first person singular, and it mixed "I read," "our own subtraction" and "We refuse" inside a single bullet. Every first person singular has been converted to the series voice. No finding, figure, quotation or scope changed in that conversion. 4. Not changed, and recorded so the other side can be. The audit found this article's scope statement, that we read nine state claim-settlement instruments and that forty-one states are unread, in conflict with a sibling article's statement that the project read the claims settlement regulations of three states and did not read "the other 47 states." The nine-instrument count here is accurate, is a count of what this article read, and is properly scoped in every sentence that uses it. Nothing is changed here. The subtraction to 47 in the sibling article is the figure that is wrong at project level, because seven further state claims-settlement instruments, those of Ohio, Hawaii, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and New York, were read at their own text and published in this article. The sibling article's three are California, Oregon and Washington, so only California and Washington are common to both counts.

General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.

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