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Can You Identify
This Man?
If you think hiring a professional is
expensive, wait till you
hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Contract
Investigators
Wanted
I am constantly looking for contract investigators in the Southwest who can help out with eyes and ears in various locations.
If you—or someone you know—is willing to help me out on an occasional basis, please call me at 505-275-7777 or email wbrewr@yahoo.com.
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| | RESIDENCY INVESTIGATIONS TO THE RESCUE!
When You Need to Know Where Someone Lived
on a Specific Date, a Residency Investigation Could Provide the Answer
At a recent Federal Court settlement conference that I was invited to attend here in New Mexico, involving two insurance companies and several plaintiffs, the defense attorneys and an adjuster were lamenting the fact that they had no proof that a claimant was a "real" resident of the named insured's household on or before the date of loss. These highly competent defense attorneys complained that plaintiff's counsel would not provide pertinent information to allow them to concretely make a coverage decision. However, neither these attorneys nor their respected insurance company clients had conducted any type of residency investigation, with the possible exception of checking the driver's license address and calling the local police to ask if they knew whether or not this person resided in the household.
Many attorneys and insurance companies apparently rely on drivers' license addresses to establish residency for coverage purposes, unaware that this is NOT a reliable source of information—especially now that licenses can be issued for up to eight years in New Mexico. Often these coverage issues involve young adults who have died and who may not have been residing at home any longer but were still using their parents' address as "home base." Ask yourself if you or other family members have always updated your driver's license address after every move. To give you an example of how misleading drivers' license information can be, we recently encountered a situation where an interstate truck driver lost his driver's license in the state where he actually resides but then obtained a New Mexico driver's license utilizing his employer's address as his "home address."
I brought the topic of residency investigations up to one of the attorneys who had attended the settlement conference and he was surprised to hear that this type of investigation was available. I told him that Wayne Brewer & Associates has conducted untold numbers of these investigations over the years for coverage purposes and that at least 50% of the time we are able to determine concretely whether or not a person was residing in a particular household on a particular date of loss, thus allowing the insurance company to immediately make a coverage decision based on residency. In the other 50% of cases, we are usually able to provide substantial information to assist in the discovery process that may be forthcoming.
As with most investigations, the sooner you initiate a residency investigation after a date of loss, the better your chances will be of obtaining accurate information. In those instances where we were able to begin our investigation a few weeks after the loss, our success rate has been close to 95%. But beginning a residency investigation months or years after the loss dramatically decreases the probability of determining whether or not the deceased subject lived at a specific address on a specific date.
So how does an investigator
conduct a residency investigation?
The first step is to utilize non-public databases that compile addresses that the subject has used and/or reported to various credit-related organizations. These address listings often include dates, which may or may not be accurate, so it is necessary for an investigator to follow up and verify any information that he/she obtains.
The next step is to order police reports and check public records to look for any type of activity that might reflect where the person was residing on a particular date. You might be surprised by what you can learn when you review the records from all of the venues in which the non-public database records indicate the individual has resided.
If the information obtained up to this point is not explicit, the final step would be to interview neighbors and relatives of the subject, which may or may not be fruitful. Whether neighbors know anything about a subject depends upon several factors, including the type of neighborhood, how long the subject's family has resided there, and how long the neighbors have resided there. When I first started doing residency investigations 30+ years ago, people were generally more knowledgeable about their neighbors but it is amazing how often we now don't know who lives directly across the street or next door to us.
What does all this cost?
You might be surprised at how inexpensive this investigation is, especially when you look at the alternatives of not having accurate information and making a wrong coverage decision or going into litigation just to determine whether or not there is coverage. As I stated above, even if we aren't able to definitively determine whether someone resided at a particular address on a particular date, you will still be provided with a vast amount of information that you can use in the legal discovery process of depositions, interrogatories, etc.
If you—or anyone you know—might need to have a residency investigation conducted, please email me or call me to discuss your particular case. Wayne Brewer and Associates, Inc. conducts background and residency investigations nationwide, with no travel costs incurred by you. We are here to help you take the guesswork out of your coverage questions.
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