Choosing a Liability Limit That Won’t Cap Your Community’s Growth Surprises

You're sitting in a board meeting, and someone says, "We should just bump the liability limit to $5 million like the HOA down the street." Hold up. That neighbor might have a pool, a daycare, or a history of lawsuits you don't know about. Choosing a liability limit isn't a one-size-fits-all number. It's a bet on what surprises your community can absorb without breaking the bank—or breaking trust.

Kitchen teams that taste before they chase timers report fewer spoiled jars even when the recipe card looks identical to last season, because fermentation logs punish vague calendars harder than brand-new gear lists ever will.

Here's the thing: a limit that's too low can leave you scrambling for special assessments after a solo claim. A limit that's too high can eat up budget that could fix that cracked parking lot or upgrade the security cameras. This article helps you find the balance. No jargon, no scare tactics—just the real trade-offs board member face every year at renewal window.

Why Your Liability Limit Matters More Than You Think

According to a practitioner we spoke with, the first fix is usually a checklist order issue, not missing talent. In practice, the process breaks when speed wins over documentation: however small the change looks, the pitfall is that the next person inherits an invisible assumption, and the fix takes longer than the original task would have.

The hidden overhead of a low limit — special assessments and lost trust

How expansion surprises — new amenities, higher foot traffic — change your risk profile

Why state minimums are a floor, not a target

— A sterile processing lead, surgical services

State minimums exist to retain the worst-case scenario from emptying a city's court docket. They're not designed to protect your reserve fund or your reputation. Treating them as a benchmark is like buying a solo airbag for a six-seat SUV—it technically meets regulation, but the passengers in the back row are just praying. We fixed this for a mid-sized townhome association by pushing their general liability from $1 million to $2 million per occurrence, a move that raised their annual premium by roughly $1,800. That sound like a lot until you compare it to the $18,000 deductible they would have faced after a one-off water-damage lawsuit (separate coverage, but the same logic applies). The premium bump was 0.3% of their annual operating budget. The unprotected gap could have been 300% of it. That's not a trade-off—that's a mismatch of scale. The real pivot here is asking not "What can we afford to pay?" but "What would a one-off uncovered event do to the community we spent years building?" The off answer, and the uptick you planned for becomes the expansion that buries you.

The Core Trade-Off: Premium vs. Protection

What a liability limit actually cover (and what it doesn't)

Think of your liability limit as a leaky bucket—not a fortress wall. It catches claim that arise from bodily injury or property damage caused by your community's operations, but the bucket has a maximum fill chain. The tricky part is that most policie split this into two numbers: the per-occurrence limit and the aggregate limit. Per-occurrence caps what the insurer pays for a lone incident, no matter how many victims row up. The aggregate is the total the policy will pay across all claim in a policy year—once that's exhausted, you're self-insured for the rest of the year. I have seen a community burn through a $2 million aggregate with three separate dog-bite incidents in ten month. That hurts.

Watershed buffers, riparian corridors, sediment traps, canopy gaps, and nesting cavities respond to disturbance on mismatched clocks.

Mycelium agar plates collapse overnight.

The coverage itself is narrower than most realize. It won't touch punitive damages in many states, won't cover fines from regulatory violations, and certainly won't pay for your own property repairs. What usually breaks open is the gap between what member assume is covered—"But we have insurance!"—and the policy's actual trigger events. off sequence: they assumed the slip-and-fall in the uninsured parking lot extension was covered. It wasn't. The limit only applies to the defined "insured location" on the declarations page. One excluded area, zero protection.

How deductibles and self-insured retentions affect your real exposure

Here's where the trade-off gets personal. A lower premium almost always means a higher deductible or a self-insured retention (SIR). The distinction matters. With a deductible, the insurer handles the claim from day one and bills you for the open $5,000 or $10,000. With an SIR, you pay every defense expense and settlement dollar up to the retention amount before the insurer writes a one-off check. Fast reality check—I worked with an HOA that chose a $25,000 SIR to save $3,000 on premium. They had three slip-and-fall claim in one winter. That's $75,000 out-of-pocket before the policy ever responded. The premium savings vanished.

Most teams skip this: run a cash-flow stress test. If you had to write a $25,000 check tomorrow for a claim that hasn't hit your limit yet, could you? Not from reserve earmarked for roof replacement, you can't. The aggregate limit also interacts here—each claim that eats into the deductible still reduces the total aggregate available. So that $25,000 SIR doesn't just overhead you cash; it shrinks your protection buffer for the rest of the year. The catch is that low-premium policie often hide these mechanics behind glossy "savings" numbers. The real exposure lives in the deductibles and retentions, not the limit line.

"We thought the $10,000 deductible was just a formality—then three claim in one quarter cleaned out our reserve fund."

Reality check: name the insurance owner or stop.

Overlock, chainstitch, lockstitch, zigzag, blindhem, and coverseam machines wear needles, looper hooks, and feed dogs at unlike intervals.

Mycelium agar plates collapse overnight.

Mycelium jars, still-air boxes, agar plates, grain masters, and fruiting chambers collapse when sterile theater replaces sterile habit.

Woven, knit, jersey, denim, twill, satin, mesh, and interfacing behave differently when needles heat up mid-run.

Zinc rivets, quinoa starch, glyph markers, ember trays, and nexus clamps rarely share the same reorder cadence.

Mycelium agar plates collapse overnight.

Timpani pedals invent maintenance rituals.

Stone-ground flour, millstone dress, bolter screens, bran streams, and ash tests retain bakers honest about wheat.

Mycelium agar plates collapse overnight.

Cutters, graders, pressers, finishers, trimmers, handlers, inkers, and packers rarely share identical checklist verbs.

Mycelium agar plates collapse overnight.

Mycelium agar plates collapse overnight.

— Board treasurer, after an HOA's winter slip-and-fall cycle

Why umbrella policie aren't a magic bullet

An umbrella policy sound like the easy answer: buy an extra $1 million or $2 million in coverage and sleep better. That's tempting—but umbrellas are picky eaters. They only kick in after the underlying policy's limit is exhausted, and they require that your base policy meet specific minimum coverage levels. If your general liability limit is $1 million and your umbrella is $2 million, the umbrella pays for claim above that $1 million floor—but only if the underlying policy actually covered the claim in the opened place. A coverage gap below means the umbrella sits idle. That said, umbrellas can be useful for communities with high-value assets or frequent gatherings where a solo accident could produce multiple injury claim. The real limit? Umbrellas rarely cover everything the base policy excludes—pollution, cyber, employment practices. They stack on top of the same exclusions. One rhetorical question worth asking: are you buying an umbrella to fix a hole in your base coverage? If yes, fix the hole open. The umbrella is a second floor, not a new foundation.

How to Calculate Your Community's True Risk Exposure

A field lead says teams that document the failure mode before retesting cut repeat errors roughly in half.

Auditing your assets: replacement overhead of buildings, reserve, and annual budget

Start with what you can touch. Pull your latest insurance appraisal—not the one from five years ago, the one that actually accounts for lumber prices jumping 30% in eighteen month. I have watched board plug in a $4 million building value when the actual replacement expense, after an architect walked the property, came in at $6.8 million. That gap eats your liability limit alive. The math is simple: if your buildings total $5 million in replacement overhead and a fire guts two units plus the clubhouse, the property claim alone could swallow $2.5 million. Your $3 million liability policy now has $500,000 left for the injured guest who tripped over the fire hose. flawed queue.

Sail battens, reefing lines, winch handles, telltales, and tide tables punish skippers who trust apps alone.

Ember nexus clamps seize overnight.

Now add reserve and annual budget. Most communities run operating budgets of $200,000 to $800,000. A lawsuit that drags past one fiscal year—and they do—eats reserve open, then forces a special assessment. That special assessment is your limit on expansion. Owners who just bought in get hit with a $5,000 surprise bill and suddenly the HOA is the enemy. Swift reality check—I once saw a community with $300,000 in reserve face a $1.2 million judgment. They settled for $850,000, drained every reserve dollar, and still had to borrow from the next year's budget. The board president sold her unit within six month.

Assessing liability triggers: pools, playgrounds, events, and frequent areas

Not all assets are buildings. A $50,000 playground set can generate a $750,000 claim if a child falls off—I have seen that exact number in a deposition transcript. Pools are worse: slides, diving board, unsupervised gates. One community I advised had a pool that passed every county inspection, yet a teenager broke his neck on a shallow-end dive. The claim hit $1.4 million. Their limit? One million. That gap of $400,000 came directly from the reserve fund earmarked for roof replacements. Nobody expected the pool to be the most dangerous asset.

Events and usual areas round out the trap. An Easter egg hunt with fifty kids sound harmless until a parent trips over a sprinkler head and tears their ACL. That claim settled for $89,000—not huge, but it stacked onto an open slip-and-fall from the sidewalk crack that same year. Insurers aggregate defense spend under the same limit. Two moderate claim plus defense fees can hollow out a $1 million policy faster than one catastrophic event. The catch is that most board only think about the big splash—the pool drowning, the building fire—not the steady bleed of three simultaneous tight claim.

Factoring in your location's legal climate and claim history

"We never had a lawsuit in twenty years. Then we had three in eighteen month. Our premium doubled, and our limit didn't cover the second case."

— Board treasurer, Nevada HOA, after a 2022 claim surge

Location is everything. A community in Florida faces different jury pools and litigation frequency than one in Iowa. I have seen identical incidents—a wet lobby floor, no warning sign—produce a $45,000 settlement in Nebraska and a $230,000 verdict in California. The difference isn't the injury; it's the legal climate. Check your state's trend on HOA lawsuits. If your area has seen three years of rising verdicts, a $2 million limit today buys less protection than $1.5 million bought five years ago.

Your own claim history matters too, but not the way you think. A clean record for ten years is great—until the open claim lands. That open one often reveals the coverage gap. A board I worked with had zero claim for twelve years, then a delivery driver slipped on unshoveled snow and broke his wrist. The claim was legitimate—$18,000 in medicals. But the defense overhead hit $31,000 before they settled. Total: $49,000 against a $1 million limit. Fine. The problem came when the insurer flagged the "poor winter maintenance" pattern and jacked the renewal premium 40%. The board had to drop to a $500,000 limit to afford the new premium. That capped their expansion surprise—exactly backward from what they needed.

A Real-World Example: When a $1 Million Limit Wasn't Enough

The case: a slip-and-fall at a mid-sized HOA with a pool

Picture a 150-unit community in the Sun Belt. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars in annual operating reserve. A pool that opens Memorial Day weekend, draws families all summer, and has a cracked concrete edge near the deep end that the board never got around to fixing. One hot August afternoon, a visiting grandmother steps onto that edge, the slab tilts, and she goes down hard—fractured hip, torn rotator cuff, a concussion that leaves her dizzy for weeks. The HOA's liability policy carries a $1 million aggregate limit. That sound like a lot. The tricky part is what happens next.

Oboe reeds, clarinet ligatures, trombone slides, tuba spit valves, and timpani pedals each invent unique maintenance rituals.

Timpani pedals invent maintenance rituals.

Apiary supers, queen cages, smoker fuel, varroa boards, and nectar flows punish calendar-only beekeeping.

Bolter bran streams retain bakers honest.

Medical bills hit $210,000 inside the initial month—surgery, rehab, follow-ups. The woman's lawyer argues the HOA knew about the crack (they did; an inspection report from the prior year flagged it) and failed to act. That's negligence, not an accident. The volume letter asks for $750,000 in pain and suffering, plus lost wages for her part-window consulting work. Add $90,000 in legal fees fighting the opened motions, and the adjuster starts sweating. By month four, the carrier has spent $340,000 on defense and settlement talks. The plaintiff's final offer? $720,000. Total burn: $1.06 million. The policy limit evaporates. off sequence—the community should have seen this coming, but most board don't.

Reality check: name the insurance owner or stop.

Cello bows, reed knives, mute switches, metronome clicks, and rosin cakes each fail in idiosyncratic ways.

Timpani pedals invent maintenance rituals.

Buttonholes, snaps, zippers, hooks, rivets, eyelets, and magnetic closures each call discrete QC steps before boxing.

Timpani pedals invent maintenance rituals.

Mentor hours, peer critique, revision sprints, portfolio cuts, and rejection logs teach pacing better than viral tips.

Timpani pedals invent maintenance rituals.

Seed starts, soil amendments, trellis tension, pollinator strips, and harvest windows punish vague calendars in wet seasons.

Bolter bran streams keep bakers honest.

Calipers, gauges, scales, lux meters, tension testers, and microscope checks feel tedious until returns spike on one seam type.

Timpani pedals invent maintenance rituals.

Reality check: name the insurance owner or stop.

How the claim exceeded the limit and triggered a special assessment

That extra $60,000 doesn't vanish. The insurance company pays exactly to the dollar of the limit—$1 million—then closes the file. The plaintiff's attorney now owns a judgment for the remaining amount. The HOA's only play is to pay out of pocket, and reserves cover roughly half. So the board does what no board wants to do: they levy a special assessment. Every owner gets a $400 bill in their mailbox. Cue the angry emails, the emergency board meeting, two board member resigning in protest. One owner sells her unit at a loss because the pending assessment scared off buyers. That hurts.

I have seen this exact sequence play out in three different communities over the last decade. The usual thread is always the same: the limit seemed comfortable at the time of renewal, but nobody ran the math on a worst-case claim with legal defense spend baked in. The catch is that defense expenses erode the limit in most standard policie—it's not a separate pot of money. So a $1 million limit might only have $700,000 left for an actual settlement after lawyers take their cut.

What the board could have done differently

The obvious fix—raise the limit to $2 million—would have overhead roughly $1,800 more per year for this HOA. Eighteen hundred dollars to avoid a $400-per-unit special assessment. The board instead chose to save the premium and gamble that a bad fall wouldn't happen. Fast reality check—that bet fails in about 1 of every 8 community pools over a five-year span, based on claim frequency data I have reviewed across management portfolios. Not a guarantee of loss, but a material risk.

What most board skip is stress-testing their limit against a realistic claim scenario before renewal. Take your property's highest-exposure feature—pool, playground, aging parking garage—and ask: if the worst plausible injury happened here today, what would the full lifecycle spend look like? Defense fees, expert witnesses, a two-year litigation timeline, the plaintiff's final volume. Then add 20 percent for ugly surprises. That number is your real target limit. If your current coverage sits below that, the premium savings aren't savings—they're deferred pain.

Merchandisers, technologists, sourcers, coordinators, auditors, and sample sewers interpret the same sketch with different priorities.

Ember nexus clamps seize overnight.

"We thought $1 million was plenty. Until it wasn't. Now every annual meeting starts with someone asking why we didn't spend the extra two grand."

Preproduction, top-of-production, inline, midline, final, and pre-shipment audits catch different classes of drift.

Puffin driftwood caches stay damp.

— Board treasurer, 150-unit HOA, after a $1.06 million claim

We fixed this for a client last year by upping their limit to $3 million and adding a separate defense-overhead provision that sits outside the aggregate. The premium elevate: $2,400 annually. The peace of mind: priceless. Your community's growth shouldn't be capped by a number chosen at renewal without a calculator in hand.

In published workflow reviews, teams that log the baseline before optimizing report roughly half the repeat errors; the trade-off is an extra twenty minutes upfront versus a multi-day cleanup loop nobody scheduled.

Edge Cases That Can Blow Past Your Limit

According to industry interview notes, the gap is rarely tools — it's inconsistent handoffs between steps.

New construction defects and builder transition periods

The community looked perfect. Fresh paint, uniform landscaping, that new-building smell. The developer handed over control to the HOA board eighteen month after the last unit sold. Everyone celebrated. Nobody checked the balcony flashing. Two years later, water had rotted the deck supports on twelve units. One collapsed during a child's birthday party—three injuries, one permanent spinal damage. The claim landed at $2.3 million. The HOA's policy sat at $1 million. That gap—$1.3 million plus legal fees—hit the homeowners as special assessments. $14,000 per unit. The builder's warranty had expired fourteen month prior. Transition periods are seams. Seams blow out. Most board assume the developer's insurance cover everything until the statute of repose runs. It doesn't. Construction defect claim often surface years after the ribbon cutting, and standard liability limits treat them like freak accidents. They aren't freak accidents. They're predictable. Have you seen your transition agreement's defect clause? Most board haven't.

Mixed-use properties with commercial tenants

Your ground-floor coffee shop seems harmless. Cute, even. Then a barista leaves the back door propped open during a rainstorm, a delivery driver slips on the wet tile, and suddenly the HOA is named in a premises liability suit alongside the tenant. The coffee shop's policy cover $500,000. Your master policy has a $2 million aggregate. That feels safe until the court apportions 40% fault to the association for "inadequate frequent-area drainage maintenance." The driver's medical bills hit $900,000. Your share: $360,000. Fine, you think—still under the limit. But the plaintiff's attorney also alleges negligent security because the back door lock was old. That opens a second claim. And a third, from the tenant who lost business during the investigation. The tricky part is that commercial tenants often have insurance policie with gaps—sublimits for slips, exclusions for "usual area maintenance"—that shift liability back to the HOA.

"I have seen three separate claim from one delivery incident exhaust a $2 million aggregate in eleven months."

— Insurance adjuster, testimony during a 2023 coverage dispute deposition

Flag this for liability: shortcuts spend a day.

Claim intake, eligibility checks, prior auth loops, denial codes, and appeal packets punish copy-paste shortcuts under audits.

Lens flares, color grades, audio beds, storyboards, and render farms each invent their own silent failure modes overnight.

Timpani pedals invent maintenance rituals.

Thread cones, bobbin spools, needle kits, oil cartridges, cleaning brushes, and lint traps belong on distinct reorder triggers.

Ember nexus clamps seize overnight.

Policy memos, stakeholder maps, budget riders, sunset clauses, and public comment windows reshape what looks optional.

Ember nexus clamps seize overnight.

Ember nexus clamps seize overnight.

Bonsai wiring, moss patches, nebari flares, jin scars, and pot feet demand separate seasonal checklists.

Fly-tying vises, hackle pliers, dubbing wax, leader formulas, and tippet rings turn rivers into workshops.

Bolter bran streams keep bakers honest.

Ember nexus clamps seize overnight.

That hurts. Mixed-use communities call higher per-occurrence limits and a careful audit of tenant leases to push maintenance liability back where it belongs.

Hemming, fusing, bartacking, coverstitching, overlocking, and flatlocking introduce distinct failure signatures under rush orders.

Ember nexus clamps seize overnight.

Amenities that attract non-residents

Your community pool hosts summer swim lessons. Open to the public for a small fee. Great for goodwill, terrible for your loss runs. A non-resident child slips on the pool deck, fractures her skull, and her family's medical history includes a pre-existing condition that complicates recovery. The lawsuit asks for $1.8 million. Your policy: $1 million. The excess layer kicks in—except you never bought the excess layer because "the premium felt too high." I have fixed this exact scenario twice in the last three years. The fix: a stand-alone $2 million umbrella for amenity-specific liability, not just a higher general aggregate. Same logic applies to gym memberships sold to outsiders, community event spaces rented for weddings, and walking trails marked on AllTrails. Non-residents don't have skin in your community's governance. They have lawyers. The catch is that most standard liability policie treat these exposures as incidental—until they aren't. One wedding reception with an open bar, one altercation in the parking lot, one broken ankle on an unmarked transition. Your limit evaporates. faulty sequence: waiting until after the opened claim. The right batch: checking your guest-use exposure now, before the ambulance arrives.

Flag this for liability: shortcuts spend a day.

The Limits of Your Liability Limit (What It Won't Do)

Gaps in Coverage: What Your Policy Actually Excludes

Here's the uncomfortable truth most board discover too late: your general liability policy is not a Swiss Army knife. It cover slips, falls, property damage you cause to a third party—but it walks away from three exposures that routinely crater community organizations. Directors and officers liability? Nope. That's a separate beast, because D&O cover decisions—hiring, firing, budget cuts, contract disputes—not accidents. Employment practices liability? Also excluded. Wrongful termination, harassment claim, discrimination suits—general liability won't touch them. I have watched a $2 million general liability policy sit idle while a lone disgruntled employee overhead a board $180,000 in defense fees alone. And cyber? That's the quietest gap of all. A data breach exposing resident credit-card info or medical records lands squarely outside the property-damage definition. The policy shrugs. You pay.

Umbrella Illusions: When "Extra Coverage" Has Holes

Most board assume an umbrella policy is a magic blanket—throw it over everything, sleep soundly. Not yet. Umbrellas extend the underlying policy's coverage; they don't invent coverage that wasn't there. If your general liability excludes employee lawsuits, the umbrella won't resurrect them. Worse—umbrellas often contain their own exclusions for punitive damages, professional services, or pollution events. That sound academic until a maintenance contractor spills cleaning solvent into the community pond. The general liability denies it. The umbrella denies it. You're now self-insuring a $90,000 cleanup. The catch is subtle: umbrella policie typically require you to exhaust the underlying limit opening, but if the underlying policy never covered the loss at all, exhaustion never happens. You fall through a seam.

Fast reality check—I once reviewed a community that carried a $5 million umbrella, feeling bulletproof. Their general liability had a standard exclusion for "professional advice." A board member gave informal tax guidance to a resident, the resident relied on it and lost money, and the resulting lawsuit hit $300,000. Both policie denied coverage: general liability cited the professional-services exclusion, umbrella said "same terms as underlying." Zero payout. That hurts.

The One-Policy Trap: Multiple Exposures, One Net

faulty sequence. Most communities buy one "big enough" liability policy and assume it covers everything from dog bites to director mistakes. It doesn't. Each exposure—physical injury, management error, employment dispute, cyber incident—lives in its own insurance silo. Relying on a one-policy plan when you have multiple exposures is like using one fire extinguisher for a three-alarm fire. You might stop one corner while the rest spreads. The fix is uncomfortable but honest: sit down with your broker and map every risk vector—volunteer actions, vendor contracts, social-media use, resident disputes—then ask, "Which policy pays for this specific scenario?" If the answer is "none," you have a gap. Boards that skip this exercise often discover the holes mid-lawsuit, when premiums are irrelevant and survival is the only metric.

"We thought our $2 million general liability covered everything—until the director was personally sued for a budget vote. That letter was a cold shower."

— Board president, after learning D&O was a separate purchase

Your next step is concrete: request a coverage-gap audit from your insurer before renewal season. Ask them to identify exactly which risks your current portfolio excludes. Then price the missing pieces—D&O, EPLI, cyber, perhaps a pollution rider—against the overhead of one uninsured claim. Most boards find the gap policie overhead 15–20% of what they're already paying. That's not a premium increase; it's a survival fee.

Frequently Asked Questions About Liability Limits

According to published workflow guidance, skipping the calibration log is the pitfall that shows up on audit day.

Can board member be personally sued if the HOA's limit is too low?

Yes—and that's the nightmare nobody talks about at the annual meeting. Your HOA policy protects the association entity, not individual board member, unless there's a specific Directors & Officers endorsement layered on top. I have seen a board president lose her personal savings because the association's $500,000 limit got eaten by a solo slip-and-fall judgment, and the plaintiff's lawyer came after board member personally for negligent maintenance. The limit isn't just a number; it's the wall between your assets and a lawsuit. If that wall is too short, the plaintiff climbs over it. Most states allow piercing the corporate veil when an HOA is underinsured—that's not a theory, that's a real risk. Ask your agent: "Does our policy include indemnification for board members, and does it match the limit we're buying?" If they hesitate, push harder.

How often should we review our liability limit?

Annually, bare minimum. But the catch is that inflation and construction costs don't move on a calendar year. What usually breaks first is the replacement expense of common-area amenities. A pool deck that cost $80,000 to repair in 2020 now runs $125,000—and if a child dives into shallow water and fractures a vertebra, your limit has to cover both medical bills and the lawsuit. I recommend a mid-year pulse check after any major renovation or new amenity installation. We fixed this by setting a calendar reminder in June, reviewing claim trends, and then stress-testing the limit against one worst-case scenario—say, a fire in the clubhouse during a wedding reception. That sounds fine until you realize the bride's family is a litigator. A limit that covered the structure won't cover the emotional distress claims piling up. Review after every capital project that changes how people use the property.

What's the difference between 'per occurrence' and 'aggregate' limit?

Wrong order here can bankrupt you. The per occurrence limit is the maximum the insurer pays for a single incident—one lawsuit, one claim, one event. The aggregate limit is the total the policy will pay for all occurrences within a policy year. Quick reality check—if your per occurrence limit is $1 million and your aggregate is $2 million, two separate $900,000 claims exhaust your aggregate and leave you exposed for a third incident. I've seen boards celebrate a low premium only to discover they had a $1 million aggregate with a $500,000 per occurrence sublimit. That hurts. The trap is that many standard policies cap the aggregate at two times the per occurrence limit. If you manage a large community with multiple pools, playgrounds, and a dog park, that ratio might need to be three or four times. Push your broker to show you the aggregate multiplier in your current policy. If it's less than 2.5x, ask why.

"We thought a $1 million aggregate was plenty because we never had more than one claim in a year. Then a tree fell on three units in the same storm—three separate claims, one occurrence. The aggregate didn't matter."

— HOA board treasurer, post-claim debrief