No — being told your damage was an “act of God” does not automatically mean your claim isn’t covered. Whether your insurer has to pay depends on what your policy actually says and what caused the damage, not on the label an adjuster puts on it. In Illinois, most homeowners policies cover a lot of what people call acts of God. Wind, hail, lightning, and most storm damage are among the most common claims insurers pay, not exclude.
If you’ve gotten a denial letter that uses this phrase, or you’re bracing for one, here’s what this article covers: what “act of God” actually means on a claim, what your policy typically does and doesn’t cover, whether an insurer can deny you just by using the phrase, how Illinois treats damage that has more than one cause, the one thing that’s genuinely excluded, and how to tell a legitimate denial from a lowball.
What does “act of God” actually mean on an insurance claim?
“Act of God” is an informal term for a natural event that no person caused — a tornado, hailstorm, windstorm, lightning strike, or flood. It is not a category in your insurance policy, and it is not an automatic exclusion.
That distinction matters more than almost anything else on this page. When an adjuster tells you the damage was an act of God, they’re describing how the damage happened, not whether it’s covered. Your policy doesn’t have a page that says “acts of God are excluded.” What it has is a list of covered causes and a separate list of specific exclusions. The phrase itself carries no legal weight in deciding whether you get paid. So the real question is never “was this an act of God?” It’s “what does my policy say about this exact type of loss?”
Does my insurance cover an act of God, or not?
Usually, yes — at least in large part. A standard Illinois homeowners policy is what’s called an “all-risk” policy (often an HO-3). That means it covers direct physical loss to your home unless the cause is specifically excluded. Wind, hail, and lightning are covered perils under these policies. They’re not fringe events — wind and hail are consistently the single most common cause of homeowners claims nationally, accounting for over 40% of them.
Here’s the practical way to think about it:
- Typically covered: wind damage, hail damage to your roof and siding, lightning strikes, damage from a tree blown onto your house, and most sudden storm-related destruction.
- The real exclusions: flooding and earth movement (earthquake, sinkhole, landslide) are the big ones excluded from a standard policy. Wear and tear, deterioration, and neglect are also excluded — and that exclusion is one insurers reach for often, as we’ll get to.
So if someone told you “acts of God aren’t covered,” that’s simply wrong as a blanket statement. The correct question is which specific cause your insurer is pointing to, and whether that cause is actually excluded in your policy.
Can an insurance company deny my claim just by calling it an act of God?
No. In Illinois, an insurer cannot win by labeling. Once you show your loss falls within your policy’s coverage, the insurer carries the burden of proving that a specific exclusion applies. That’s a fairly light burden under an all-risk policy. The label “act of God” proves nothing.
This is baked into how Illinois courts read insurance policies. A policy is a contract, and it’s interpreted to mean what the words actually say (Hobbs v. Hartford Insurance Co., 214 Ill. 2d 11 (2005)). More importantly for you: when policy language can reasonably be read more than one way, that ambiguity gets resolved in your favor and against the insurer. That’s because the insurer wrote the policy. Lawyers call this contra proferentem; in plain terms, the company that drafted the fine print doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on its own murky wording.
That doesn’t mean you always win. If the policy language is genuinely clear, courts apply it as written, and they won’t invent an ambiguity that isn’t there (McKinney v. Allstate Insurance Co., 188 Ill. 2d 493 (1999)). But it does mean a denial has to rest on an actual, identifiable exclusion the insurer can prove — not on a phrase. An “act of God” denial with nothing more behind it is an assertion, not a defense.
The damage was partly the storm and partly old wear — is it still covered?
This is the fight underneath most storm-damage denials, and Illinois has a rule for it. When a loss results from a combination of a covered cause (like hail) and an excluded one (like pre-existing wear and tear), coverage generally exists if the covered cause was the predominating, driving cause that set the damage in motion. Lawyers call this the “efficient proximate cause” doctrine.
Here’s why it matters to you specifically. Insurers frequently concede a storm happened but argue your roof was already old and deteriorating — so, they say, you’re not owed a new roof. Sometimes that’s a fair point. Often it’s a way to avoid a claim the storm genuinely caused. Illinois law says that if hail was the real cause of the damage and the insurer is just pointing at age as a contributing factor, the excluded cause doesn’t automatically defeat coverage.
There’s a wrinkle you should know about: many modern policies contain an anti-concurrent causation clause. It’s language saying that if an excluded cause contributes to the loss at all, even alongside a covered one, nothing is paid. Illinois appellate courts have enforced these clauses (Bozek v. Erie Insurance Group, 2015 IL App (2d) 150155), though the Illinois Supreme Court hasn’t had the final word on them. The key point: such a clause only bites when there’s a genuine convergence of two causes. If hail is the sole efficient cause and “wear and tear” is just an argument, there’s no real concurrence for the clause to grab onto.
What actually decides these cases is evidence — an expert who can distinguish fresh storm damage from ordinary deterioration. If your insurer wrote off your whole claim as “wear and tear” after a storm, that conclusion is contestable, not final.
What’s the one thing that’s genuinely NOT covered — and why do they keep bringing up flood?
Flooding. That’s the exclusion that blindsides people, because storms cause both wind and water damage. A standard homeowners policy covers the wind but excludes the flood. Standard homeowners and renters policies provide no coverage for flooding — you need a separate flood policy for that.
Insurers know this seam exists, and some exploit it. After a storm, an adjuster may try to attribute as much of your damage as possible to “flooding” or “rising water” and as little as possible to wind. That’s because wind is covered and flood isn’t. The result can be a partial denial where part of your claim is paid and part is written off.
This cuts two ways, and you need to see both:
- Don’t give up on wind damage you’re owed. If wind tore off shingles or drove rain into your home through a wind-created opening, that can be a covered loss even in a storm that also caused flooding. The insurer doesn’t get to bury a covered wind claim under a flood label.
- Don’t expect the impossible. If the damage genuinely came from rising floodwater and you don’t carry flood coverage, that portion isn’t covered under a standard policy. No attorney can change your policy after the fact.
The line between wind and water is exactly where a lot of storm claims are won or lost.
Is this denial actually legitimate, or are they lowballing me?
Some denials are correct. Many aren’t — and there are specific warning signs that yours deserves a second look. You’re not being paranoid to question it: nationally, about 42% of homeowner claims were closed without any payment in 2024. Among the largest insurers, that figure was nearly half.
Watch for these red flags:
- The denial names no specific exclusion. Illinois regulation requires an insurer to “clearly set forth the policy definition, limitation, exclusion or condition upon which denial was based” in writing (50 Ill. Admin. Code § 919.50(a)(1)). A letter that just says “act of God” or “not a covered loss” without pointing to actual policy language isn’t just weak — it may violate the rule.
- There was no real inspection, or the adjuster spent ten minutes on a roof they couldn’t properly assess.
- Everything got blamed on wear and tear after a documented storm in your area.
- Wind damage got lumped in with flood to shrink or zero out the payment.
- You were offered far less than the cost to actually repair the damage.
None of these guarantees you’ll win, but each is a reason not to treat the denial as the end of the conversation. When policyholders push back formally, outcomes skew in their favor — in NAIC complaint data, the insurer’s position was overturned in about 26% of cases and led to a compromise in another 26%. The company’s original position was fully upheld only a small fraction of the time.
Three things to do now
- Get the denial in writing and read what it actually cites. If it doesn’t identify a specific policy exclusion, that’s a problem for the insurer, not for you.
- Preserve your evidence — photos of the damage, the date of the storm, any inspection reports, and every communication with the adjuster. Don’t repair anything you don’t have to before it’s documented.
- Have a first-party coverage attorney review the denial before you accept it. The label “act of God” doesn’t end your claim. A review will tell you whether the denial rests on real policy language or just on a phrase.
Talk to an Illinois first-party insurance attorney about your denied storm claim
The attorneys at Mag Mile Law in Chicago handle exactly this kind of dispute — denied and underpaid hail, wind, roof, and storm claims across Illinois. That focus matters here, because the questions this article walks through are the ones these cases turn on: whether the insurer can actually prove an exclusion, whether hail or wear-and-tear was the real cause of your roof damage, and whether a wind loss got wrongly buried under a flood label.
The firm brings an insider’s view of how carriers operate — partner Steven Mikuzis is both a coverage litigator and a licensed property-and-casualty insurance producer, and the firm’s results include a multi-million-dollar fire insurance recovery for a policyholder. If you’ve been told your damage was an act of God, that’s a claim worth a second look before you walk away from it.
This article is general legal information, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Mag Mile Law or any of its attorneys. Insurance coverage depends on the specific language of your policy and the facts of your loss; for advice about your situation, consult a licensed Illinois attorney.