Dear Piano Teachers, Professional and Amateur Musicians;

Your piano, sheet music, other musical instruments, or anything that has to do with music may not be covered under your homeowners insurance policy.

Our house recently burned and we lost everything. Our insurance company has contested payment of everything in our music room (pianos, all books and music, book shelves, etc.), stating that it was business property and homeowners insurance does not cover any business property over $500.00.

We submitted our income tax statements to prove that this was not business property, but that was not good enough -- they asked for a recorded statement and asked about employment information back to the early 1990s, and if we had ever been paid for anything related to music.

Basically, if you've ever accepted money for playing at a wedding, etc. your piano may be considered business property and not covered -- at least with this insurance company.

We've been forced to hire an attorney to get this worked out.

Call your insurance company today to make sure you are covered and get it in writing!

Please help pass this information on. I can't sleep at night knowing that there are thousands of hard working piano teachers out there that may not be covered and not know it.

I am sorry to hear about your situation Gaurdian Angel. Thankyou for bringing this up as I am sure many musicians are not aware of this. Unfortunately you are correct. I teach from home full time and contacted my unsurance company about this some years ago. Not only did they refuse to cover my instruments but they would no longer cover any of my home contents. I had to cancel my policy and go elsewhere. I now pay over the odds for home contents insurance with a company that deals with self employed people who run a business from home. Even this excludes my pianos which are insured with yet another specialist company for musical instruments. My situation is quite clear as I work a lot from home. I think the problem comes when as you say a little teaching work is carried out at home. Insurance companies will do almost anything to wriggle out of paying up (IMO). If I owned an expensive piano and didn't work from home I would insure it separately as I am sure it would not be covered by a standard home contents policy.

Chris,
You are exactly right about the insurance of a piano seperately. I do not teach, or use the piano for any business purpose, but I took the time to ask my insurance agent about coverage of my pianos in my home policy. ANYONE with a valuable instrument needs to get a "Fine Arts" rider to their home policy, with the appraised value and replacement cost of the instrument calculated by an appraiser, of which a copy is submitted to the insurance company. This is VERY important to do, if you should ever have to replace your piano due to fire or some other "act of God".
Dan

Guardian Angel, I am so sorry about the loss of your home. I hope that you and your family members (and pets?) were not physically harmed. Of course, the emotional harm of losing your home is still overwhelming. My thoughts are with you and your family.

I appreciate greatly your posting this while in the midst of dealing with your own tragedy. It was quite eye-opening to me, as I had assumed that my piano would be covered under my home-owners policy. I will place "call insurance agent" prominent on my to-do list for next week.

Hi Guardian Angel,

I'm so sorry for your loss, and thank you so much for sharing your painful lesson with us.

I had no idea about that loophole. I need to check with our insurance to find out what they say.

Sorry also to hear about your loss.

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide the warning about insurance coverage. I would have never thought about it. I'm going to check with our insurance company ASAP about what we need to do to be sure we're covered.

It has also crossed my mind before, what if a piano student was injured on one's property, for example, tripped coming up to the door, or slipped on a wet or icy sidewalk, etc. if the homeowner's insurance would cover.

I am so sorry for your loss. And I thank you for reminding everyone of this matter. When I purchased a flute for my daughter 3 or 4 years ago, I was considering the 'special' insurance policy from a insurance company. It costs like $350 a year. Considering that the flute is worth less than $10,000 and my daugher does not bring the flute to her school I didn't think it was worth it. I called my insurance company. They gave us a policy called 'land-marine' (may not be the right term), which covers the theft (or mysterious disappearance) of the 'non-professional' instrument. It costs about $30 a year. I did ask if our grand piano was cover, and they said yes since the piano is not going to disappear into thin air. It never entered my mind that our piano may not be covered if some disaster hits.

There is also a slight variation to our situation and I wonder if I mention it to our insurance they will refuse our insurance. My daughter is a high school junior. She has won monetary prize through piano competitions. Beginning this summer, a local arts organization is going to arrange recitals for her and she will get paid for her performances. The piano was pruchased under my name and I don't play or teach. So technically the piano is not used as a business tool by me. So what do you think I should do? Will the insurance company view the piano as a business tool? Shoud I even mention my daughter's concert engagements to them? The grand piano is very expensive. We do have so called 'umbrella' home owner insurance policy. But I don't know if it means anything anymore at this point.

One more thing about the flute insurance. Starting last September, my daugter became the flutist of a endowed woodwind quintet, which means that she get free coaching and gets paid quite a few bucks to be in that quintet. She also was asked to perform in a wedding. Do you think that means the flute has lost its 'non-professional' status? The flute was purchased by me but the insurance company did request my daughter's personal information when we added the policy.

The more important thing to be aware of is that your liability insurance may not cover your students when you are teaching in your home. You really need business insurance.

This is good advice. I have collected and played guitars for years and have always had to have separate detailed itemisation as well as disclosure of buiness use and special insurance for that (even though it is just a sideline for me).

I believe in both itemising and photographing pretty well any assets that I insure and then lodging both a copy of the list and a CD of teh photographs with the insurer or broker. This helps to prevent insurers wriggling out of it i fthe worst comes to the worst.

Beware too, that if you under insure, then insurers are at liberty to write down the whole cover by the under insured percentage if you suffer a full loss.

Over insuring confers no benefit to you, but does pay bigger premiums to insurers.

The cheapest insurance is not always the best.

A

I'd just like offer again the advice of having a separate rider (with an accompanying appraisal from a piano professional) for insuring your piano. In addition to the loophole mentioned above, some insurance companies seem more than happy to undervalue a piano when it comes to providing coverage to a repair.

Additionally, a number of years ago, a customer of ours (who indeed had a separate policy for the piano) had a pipe burst in a room that was (not directly) above where the piano was. Infact all of the damage to the lower floor was in an adjacent room (or so they thought) and the home owners policy covered damages to the items lost in that room, and the case was closed so to speak.
About a year later our technician was there to do some routine service to the piano, and noticed that the inside of the piano had gotten a serious bath in the not too distant past. As it turned out, the water had somehow made a trail to an area of the ceiling (which was mostly hidden due to some lighting) that was just above the piano, and had dripped a large amount of water inside the piano. Since the piano hadn't been used much that year, nobody noticed, until the tech got there and reported what he saw.
If they didn't have a separate policy for their piano they would have been s--- out of luck on getting coverage for the incident, since the claim had already been paid out. Fortunately, they were able to file a new claim for damages to the piano, and were able to get coverage.

Thank you all for this information. Speaking with my insurance agent about adding my new piano separately to the policy is now on my "to do" list. I would normally have not thought about it.

Did anyone read the insurance topic in the Piano Forum. It mentioned a company called "Heritage". The rate and coverage are more than reasonable.