Car insurance claims in Iowa

Iowa is an at-fault state, and its compulsory-insurance section says so in the plainest terms of any state in its round: a person «shall not drive a motor vehicle on the highways of this state unless financial liability coverage … is in effect for the motor vehicle and unless the driver has in the motor vehicle the proof of financial liability coverage card issued for the motor vehicle» (§ 321.20B(1)(a)). What that coverage must be is defined at § 321.1(24B)(a) — a policy insuring «against loss from liability imposed by law», at limits not less than those in § 321A.21. Those limits are twenty thousand dollars for bodily injury to one person, forty thousand for two or more, and fifteen thousand for property damage (§ 321A.21(2)(b)). The section’s own history names no amending act after the 1981 codification, so the figures are published here without an effective date rather than with a guessed one. The positive evidence for «at-fault» is what is compelled — liability cover — rather than a claim that no first-party scheme exists anywhere in the Iowa Code: the Legislature’s own full-text search route returned an empty shell, so no such negative is asserted.

Shared fault in Iowa reduces rather than bars, up to a point. Contributory fault does not bar recovery unless the claimant bears a greater percentage of fault than the combined fault of all the defendants and released parties, and damages are diminished in proportion (§ 668.3(1)(a)). A driver held exactly half to blame therefore still recovers half. A claim for loss of services, companionship, society or consortium is measured by the fault of the injured person, not of the family member bringing it (§ 668.3(1)(b)). Joint and several liability is a separate fifty-percent rule and a different fifty from the first: it does not reach a defendant under fifty percent of the total fault at all, and above that it reaches economic damages only, never noneconomic awards (§ 668.4).

The two limitation periods genuinely differ. An action founded on injuries to the person must be brought within two years of accrual, whether it is framed as contract or tort (§ 614.1(2)); an action for injuries to property runs five years (§ 614.1(4)); and an action on a written contract — the policy itself — runs ten (§ 614.1(5)(a)). None of that displaces the notice your own policy requires, which falls due long before any of them, and whether any Iowa statute limits how short a policy’s suit-against-us clause may be has not yet been verified against a primary text and is not stated here.

The Insurance Division’s rules put real clocks on an insurer, and they apply expressly to property and casualty insurers. An insurer must acknowledge notice of a claim within fifteen days unless it pays within that time, and must reply within fifteen days to any pertinent communication that reasonably suggests a response is expected (r. 191—15.42(1), (3)). A first-party claimant must be told of acceptance or denial within thirty days after properly executed proofs of loss, in writing where it is a denial, citing the provision relied on (r. 191—15.41(2)); if the insurer needs longer it must say so with reasons within thirty days and again every forty-five days after (r. 191—15.41(3)). Payment is due within thirty days of affirmation of liability where the amount is determined and undisputed, while the duty to affirm or deny is fixed only as «a reasonable time» (r. 191—15.41(6)). All of these are plain days: chapter 15 defines no «day» and uses «business day» only in rules that have nothing to do with claims, so they are not the same duty as Kentucky’s business days or Nebraska’s working days. The statute behind the rules, § 507B.4(9)(j), fixes no day count of its own and frames the duties as a general-business-practice test. Iowa also prohibits deadline pressure on a third-party claimant rather than imposing a duty to warn: no insurer may suggest that a third party’s rights may be impaired if a form or release is not completed in time, except to state the limitation period (r. 191—15.41(5)).

Uninsured, underinsured and hit-and-run cover sits in every Iowa bodily-injury policy at not less than the 20/40 floor of § 321A.1(11), and comes out only if the named insured signs a written rejection «on a separate sheet of paper which contains only the rejection and information directly related to it» (§ 516A.1). Every Iowa policy must also carry the Division’s own mandated notice that «Uninsured/underinsured coverage does not cover damage done to your vehicle» — it pays only for bodily injury, and collision cover is what pays for the car (r. 191—15.10(1)). A crash causing injury or death must be reported to a sheriff, the state patrol or the nearest peace officer «immediately by the quickest means of communication»; a written report goes to the Department of Transportation within seventy-two hours where there is injury, death or apparent total property damage of $1,500 or more — unless a law enforcement agency investigated, in which case no report is owed (§ 321.266(1)–(2)). The dollar figure belongs to the written report, not to the call. Colliding with an unattended vehicle triggers its own duty with no threshold at all: stop, find the owner, or leave a written notice in the vehicle struck (§ 321.264). Whether inherent diminished value is recoverable in Iowa has not yet been verified against a primary text and is not stated here; a search of the whole text of chapter 191—15 for «diminut», «diminish» and «loss of value» returns no hit, and that silence is a fact about the regulation, not evidence that the loss is recoverable.