May need to cancel summer holiday - insurance advice please

[rosesinmygarden]

A close relative on my dh's side is very ill as the moment.

He was given 3-6 months about 8 weeks ago and is currently in hospital.

We are due to go away for a week at the beginning of august and it's looking like we will probably have to cancel. Obviously we wont get anything back from Thomas Cook but we have Lloyds bank silver account travel insurance. Having looked at our policy documents we should be covered if the relative dies and I think we should be covered if the relative is just seriously ill. Does anyone have experience of actually claiming on something like this?

I know I could phone Lloyds and ask but I'm really not feeling up to speaking about it right now. Am just wondering what evidence we might need and what the procedure might be.

It might depend on how close the relative is. If a parent or sibling you will probably be covered. Unfortunately I think the only way you will know for sure is to contact the insurance company. Sorry you are going through this

Sorry to hear this but it really will depend on family member I think.

It can also depend on when the family member was given the diagnosis in relation to when you booked the holiday

I don't think this policy covers cancellation for issue with close relative. www.lloydsbank.com/assets/media/pdfs/current-accounts/silver_added_value_account_welcome_pack.pdf#page=47

wording:

Section A – Cancellation or curtailment
charges andearly return
• Unavoidable or necessary cancellation or curtailment of the trip or early return home and (if the situation permits) the costs of transporting you back to your resort before completion due to death, bodily injury or illness, compulsory quarantine or jury service, redundancy, withdrawal of leave for members of the armed forces or emergency services, the Police requesting you to return to or remain at your home due to serious damage to your home exceeding £1,500 caused by fire, aircraft, explosion, storm, flood, subsidence, malicious persons or theft. The maximum we will pay under this section is £5,000 per person.

Your cover may well be influenced by whether you declared the condition to the insurer, as you need to keep them informed of issues which may impact on your policy.

I don’t want to sound heartless but is it essential that you cancel? What could you actually do if you stay home?

Hope things work out as well as possible in the circumstances.

You are covered under your policy for a close relative (page 70 of the policy document linked to above), provided it was diagnosed after the policy started and could not have been foreseen. You will have to ring them. They will require a medical certificate to be sent to them. There doesn't appear to be any time limit to inform them, but it's often better to do it sooner rather than later. You have a £40 excess to pay and can claim up to £5000.

as long as close relative is:
means mother, mother-in-law, father, father-in-law,
sister, sister-in-law, brother, brother-in-law, wife,
husband, civil partner, daughter, daughter-in-law,
son, son-in-law, grandparent, grandchild, step
parent, step child, step sister, step brother, foster
child, partner or fiancé/fiancée an InsuredPerson

Thank you delilahbucket that really useful information about the certificate and the excess. I'll phone them as soon as dh decides.

We booked almost a year ago and she was diagnosed in April so I already know we are likely to be covered and I don't really want opinions on whether we should cancel, I was asking for anyone's similar experiences. It's going to be dh's decision as it's his mother.

We had to come back early from our holiday last summer as dp's dad died while we were abroad.

The travel insurance company did pay up in the end, but they wanted a lot of paperwork including a copy of the death certificate and a letter from the gp. There was a lot if emailing back and forth between dp and the insurers, because of the amount of evidence that they wanted and because we disputed some of their calculations.

In the end they paid all the costs that we had incurred, but they certainly didn't make it easy for us. I think a lot of people wouldn't have been as persistent as my very stubborn dp, especially at such a stressful time. The cynical part of me thinks that that is what insurers count on.

We'd never made a claim on travel insurance before so don't know how typical our experience was.