Who gets paid
Short answer: you do — the depreciation is your money, held back under conditions, not the insurer's to keep. The longer answer has one large exception that surprises people at the mailbox: if you have a mortgage, the check is usually co-payable to your lender, and the lender's process stands between you and the money.
Recoverable depreciation is released to the policyholder once the work is completed, the proof is submitted, and the deadline is met — up to the amount actually spent on the repair or replacement. Spend less than the estimate and the release shrinks to the spend; that is the deal the policy describes, and it is why the final invoice matters as much as the work.
Two situations change the payee, not the amount: a mortgagee (your lender) named on the policy, and an assignment you signed giving a contractor or other party rights to the payment. Read anything a contractor asks you to sign at the door: an assignment of benefits hands them the check and the fight.
Lenders are named on homeowners policies because the house is their collateral. Claim checks above a threshold (often a few thousand dollars — the lender's own rule) are issued to you and the mortgage company jointly. You cannot cash a two-name check alone: the lender must endorse it, and most lenders route the money through a loss draft process — the funds sit in escrow and are released in draws as the work is inspected and verified.
That process is its own fight, with its own pages here: why the check has two names and how the release actually works. One warning that belongs on this page too: lender delays eat the same depreciation deadline you are racing — start the lender's paperwork in parallel with the repairs, not after them. In California, mortgagee delay is recognized good cause for extending the deadline.
Then the depreciation is not released — that is the definition of the holdback. You keep the first (actual cash value) check; the withheld part stays with the insurer. There are narrow exceptions people argue about (a total loss where you buy a replacement home elsewhere — California's code expressly protects that choice, with the measure capped at what rebuilding at the original site would have cost), but the working rule is simple: no completed work, no second payment.
Run your own numbers. The free checker takes your state, your dates, and the figures on the insurer's estimate — and returns the dollars still held back, your real deadline, and the next document to send. Run the checker →
The pages above are the map. The kit is the paperwork: the proof packet that releases the money, the letters that protect the clocks, and the complaint pack for when the stall continues.
One payment, yours to keep. We never ask you to upload your policy — you file everything yourself. See everything inside the kit →