Maine Property Study Guide

Learn one fact before anything else on this paper, because every other property answer hangs off it. Maine did not adopt the standard fire policy by reference. Maine printed the entire policy text inline, with consecutively numbered lines, inside 24-A M.R.S. §3002. The proof of loss, the appraisal clause, the vacancy limit and the suit limitation are therefore not policy language. They are statute.

The form is prescribed, and the form is the law

§3002 leaves no room: “No insurer may issue fire insurance policies on property in this State other than those of the Maine standard fire insurance policy.” An insurer writing a multi-state form may still reach compliance with an endorsement or a rider, so the mandate is a floor rather than a ban on national paper. But the clauses are fixed.

Every number below is therefore a legal deadline rather than a carrier practice.

Three sixties, and a twenty that is not a payment clock

The prescribed form carries three sixty-day periods, and they run from three different events.

• Proof of loss. The insured “shall render to this Company a proof of loss … within sixty days after the loss, unless such time is extended.”
• When the money is due. The loss is payable “sixty days after proof of loss … is received by this Company and ascertainment of the loss is made.”
• Vacancy. Coverage is suspended where the building is “vacant or unoccupied beyond a period of sixty consecutive days.”

One number in the form is not a sixty: the company may cancel on 10 days’ written notice.

Then a fourth clock, in a different section entirely. §3041 requires that “the insurer or its representative shall begin adjustment of such loss within 20 days after the receipt of the notice of loss.” Twenty days to start, not to pay. That is the conflation an exam item wants.

Appraisal: twenty days to name, fifteen to agree

Because appraisal sits inside the prescribed form, it is a legal mechanism rather than a term of art. Each party selects “a competent and disinterested appraiser” and notifies the other within twenty days of the demand. The two appraisers then select an umpire, and “failing for fifteen days to agree upon such umpire,” a judge selects one. Twenty then fifteen — the sequence is the answer as often as the figures are.

Commercial property runs on §3007

Commercial risks fall outside Maine’s personal-lines cancellation act — §3007 expressly excludes anything subject to that act and picks up everything else. Its machinery is a block of five numbers: 10 days to cancel, 30 days to nonrenew, receipt presumed on the 3rd calendar day after mailing, a new-business window of 60 days, and a hearing exercisable within 45 days on which the insurer bears the burden of proof.

That last point is the one worth carrying: at a Maine commercial cancellation hearing the carrier must prove it was right, not the insured that it was wrong.

Hurricane deductibles, and two bans on underwriting

A hurricane deductible in Maine is not triggered by wind speed and not by a Saffir-Simpson category. It may apply “only during the period that starts when the National Weather Service issues a hurricane warning for a forecast zone that includes any part of the municipality in which the insured property is located and ends twenty-four (24) hours after the National Weather Service terminates the last hurricane warning.” A wind-speed answer is wrong however plausible it sounds.

Two underwriting prohibitions close the chapter, and both are specific to Maine. An insurer may not act on the age of a dwelling alone (§3057), and may not refuse coverage because of a previous owner’s losses (§3058). Both are flat bans on a single factor.