Nerdy takeaways
- Ordinance or law coverage pays expenses associated with bringing your home up to current building standards after a claim.
- Your homeowners policy may include some ordinance or law coverage, but you can often buy more.
- Ordinance or law coverage may be most useful for people who own older homes.
A tropical storm sweeps through your town in a swirl of debris, shattering a few of your home’s windows. You file a claim with your homeowners insurance company, expecting it to pay for new windows. But when it’s time to do the work, you discover that the latest building codes in your area require hurricane shutters or impact-resistant glass on all windows — neither of which you had.
Your homeowners policy will pay enough to replace your windows with similar ones to what you had. However, it won’t cover the additional cost of upgrading the glass or buying shutters.
In a scenario like this, ordinance or law coverage can come in handy.
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Answer a few questions to see custom quotes and find the right policy for you.What is ordinance or law coverage?
Ordinance or law coverage is insurance that pays to bring your home in line with current building codes after a covered claim.
A homeowners policy is designed to help you restore your home to its condition before the damage, not to make improvements. So if the latest building codes require upgraded wiring or more wind-resistant roofing than you had, your policy’s dwelling coverage generally won’t pay for those extras. Ordinance or law coverage could fill the gap.
Did you know...
Dwelling coverage is the part of a homeowners insurance policy that pays for repairs to the structure of your home.Your homeowners insurance policy may include a small amount of ordinance or law coverage, but you can often buy more as an add-on to your policy.
What does ordinance or law insurance cover?
Ordinance or law coverage pays for three main categories of expenses that local building codes could trigger.
Rebuilding or updating an undamaged part of your home
In some cases, building code updates might require you to make changes to parts of your house that didn’t suffer damage. Ordinance or law coverage can help with this.
Example: Imagine that a fire spreads through multiple rooms before firefighters get it under control. In some parts of the U.S., a house that’s more than 50% damaged has to be torn down instead of being repaired. But your homeowners policy will typically pay to rebuild only the part of your home that was damaged. Without ordinance or law coverage, you’d have to pay for the rest of the rebuild yourself.
Here’s another example. Say you file a claim for water damage after a burst pipe. Your home has outdated knob-and-tube wiring that needs to be replaced — in the room where the pipe burst and throughout the house. A standard homeowners policy likely wouldn’t pay for new wiring in the undamaged part of your house, but ordinance or law coverage would.
Demolition
If a covered disaster destroys your house, a homeowners policy may pay to remove the debris so you can rebuild. But say your home is only partly damaged and local law requires you to tear down the rest of it. In that case, you may need ordinance or law coverage to pay the full cost of demolition and debris removal.
Example: Let’s go back to the fire scenario above, where the damage is so extensive you’re required to tear down your entire house. Your homeowners policy probably won’t pay to demolish the parts of your home that weren’t damaged. That’s where demolition coverage comes in.
Updating a damaged part of your home
As noted above, ordinance or law coverage can pay for unexpected upgrades while you're repairing a damaged part of your house.
Example: Dinner goes very, very wrong one night, and your kitchen catches fire. Among other things, the pipes to the kitchen sink are damaged, and a contractor tells you that your plumbing is years out of date. Ordinance or law coverage could pay for the necessary updates, up to your policy limit.
What’s not covered
Policy wording and definitions in ordinance or law coverage can vary across insurers, so it’s important to read that portion of your policy to understand exactly what is and isn’t covered. Standard policies usually exclude the following:
- Uncovered events. If the damage is caused by an event that your home insurance policy doesn’t cover, such as a flood or earthquake, your ordinance or law coverage won’t pay out.
- Voluntary upgrades. Ordinance or law coverage is triggered by a sudden, accidental event that causes damage. But if you’re remodeling and you find outdated wiring systems you want to update, you’ll have to pay for it out of pocket.
- Pollution and mold. If you’re required to test for or remove hazardous material like pollutants, asbestos or dry rot, the cost to do so isn’t usually covered.
Do you need ordinance or law coverage?
Building codes and other local regulations change regularly, so ordinance or law coverage is worth considering unless your house is brand-new.
- Check your declarations page: Look at your current policy to see whether you already have some ordinance or law coverage.
- Consider bumping up your coverage: Even if you already have ordinance and law coverage, the standard 10% might not be enough. If it’s been more than 10 years since you last updated your home’s wiring, roof, insulation, windows, heating and cooling systems, or plumbing, ask your agent to price out an increase in coverage.
How much ordinance or law coverage do I need?
Ordinance or law coverage is usually offered as a percentage of your dwelling coverage limit. The standard amount included in many homeowners policies is 10% of your dwelling coverage. However, some insurers may offer additional coverage equal to 25%, 50% or even 100% of your dwelling limit.
Here’s how those different coverage levels translate to actual dollar amounts based on your home’s dwelling coverage:
Ordinance or law coverage | $350,000 dwelling coverage | $500,000 dwelling coverage |
|---|---|---|
10% | $35,000 | $50,000 |
25% | $87,500 | $125,000 |
50% | $175,000 | $250,000 |
How much ordinance or law coverage you need depends on the age of your home and how often the building codes change where you live.
The older your home is, the higher you may want this limit to be. Has it been decades since you updated your wiring, plumbing or heating and cooling systems? If so, your home could be significantly out of step with current regulations. If something goes wrong, you might be grateful for a generous ordinance or law limit to make required changes.
🤓Nerdy Tip
Even if your house is only 10 years old, it might be more outdated than you think. Many state and local governments model their building codes after safety standards from the International Code Council. These standards are updated every three years.Price and risk tolerance are also factors. If it only costs an extra $10 per year to go from 10% to 50%, then why not enhance your coverage? But if the price jump is significant and you’ve got enough savings to cover an upgrade out of pocket, you might not find additional coverage worth the higher premium.
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- 1.U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 250 Years of Residential Building Codes in the United States. Accessed Jul 6, 2026.
