A Tree Fell on My House — Who Pays in Queensland?

Your home building policy, typically. Damage to the house, and usually to outbuildings and the contents damaged as a result, subject to your policy terms and your excess.

The part that catches people: removal of the fallen tree itself is not always covered to the same extent as the damage it caused. Many policies will pay to remove the portion of the tree that is on the insured structure, or to the extent removal is needed to repair the damage, but not to clear the rest of it out of your yard. Read that clause specifically, because it is a common gap and it is often several thousand dollars wide.

Still your own insurer, in the ordinary case. This surprises people and feels wrong, but it is how property insurance works — your policy covers damage to your property, and it does not usually matter where the tree grew.

What happens next is that your insurer may pursue your neighbour’s insurer to recover what it paid, which is called subrogation. That is a process run between insurers, on the evidence, and it does not require anything from you beyond what you have already given them. If it succeeds you may get your excess back. If it does not, you are usually no worse off.

Your neighbour only becomes directly liable where negligence can be shown — see the next section.

Same starting point: claim on your own policy. A council is not automatically liable for damage caused by a tree it owns, any more than you are automatically liable for yours.

Councils assess these claims on whether they were negligent — whether the tree had a known or reasonably discoverable defect, whether it was on an inspection programme, and whether they acted on anything reported to them. If you had previously reported that tree to council, that is the single most important fact in the claim, so find the reference number, the email, or the date of the call. A council with a record of a complaint it did not act on is in a materially different position from one that had never heard of the tree.

Note that public authorities also have statutory protections that private tree owners do not, so these claims are harder than they look. That is a question for a solicitor rather than an arborist.

Fences are usually covered under the home policy rather than a separate one, and a dividing fence damaged by a tree also engages the fencing provisions of the Neighbourhood Disputes (Dividing Fences and Trees) Act 2011 — which is a different conversation with your neighbour from the tree itself.

Cars are not covered by your home policy. A car crushed by a tree is a claim on the car’s comprehensive policy, and a third-party-property-only policy will generally not cover it at all. The same negligence question applies if you want to pursue the tree’s owner.

Outbuildings — sheds, carports, pergolas, water tanks — are usually insured under the home policy, but often with their own sub-limits. Check the limit rather than assuming.

It is not a test of what your neighbour happened to notice. It is a test of what a reasonable owner in their position would have known, and the evidence that usually decides it:

• Prior complaints. Anything in writing — a text, an email, a letter, a message — showing the owner was told. This is the most powerful evidence there is, and it is why the conversation you had eighteen months ago matters now.
• Visible defects. Dead limbs over a target, a cavity or hollow, fungal fruiting bodies at the base or on the trunk, a split or included bark at a major union, a lean that changed, lifting soil on one side of the base. These are things an owner walks past. Whether they should have understood what they were seeing is exactly what gets argued.
• A previous arborist report. If the tree had been assessed and works were recommended and not done, that is close to decisive. Reports do not expire quietly — they establish knowledge.
• Prior partial failure. A limb that came down last season from the same tree puts an owner on notice about the rest of it.
• What the timber shows. Decay, old wounds, root damage and included bark are visible in the failure surfaces after the event, and they indicate how long the defect had been developing. A tree that failed through twenty years of butt rot did not become dangerous on the night of the storm.

It cuts both ways, which is why it is worth understanding from both sides of the fence.

If you own the tree, a tree risk assessment on a reasonable interval is the best defence available. It shows you took the question seriously, acted on what a qualified assessor found, and did what a reasonable owner would do. Trees still fail, including trees assessed as sound — but the question at that point is whether you were negligent, and a documented programme answers it.

If your neighbour’s tree fell on you, the absence of any inspection is not itself negligence, but combined with a visible defect and an ignored complaint it builds a picture. The reverse is also true: if they had the tree properly assessed and acted on the advice, your claim against them personally is weak, whatever the damage.

Then your position is considerably stronger, and the first thing to do is find the evidence of it. A text message, an email, a letter, a note, a witness to the conversation — anything with a date on it.

A verbal warning with nothing to corroborate it is not worthless, but it turns into one person’s word against another’s, and it is the kind of dispute that gets resolved by whoever has the paperwork. If you are currently worried about a neighbour’s tree and nothing has happened yet, put it in writing today. It costs nothing and it changes your position entirely.

Where that is where you are, an expert witness report is the document that turns the arboricultural facts into evidence a tribunal or a court can act on.

Once it is on your land, it is generally your responsibility to clear, which strikes most people as unfair and is nonetheless the usual starting point. Practically: your insurer deals with the part that damaged an insured structure, and the rest is yours.

You may be able to recover the cost from the neighbour where negligence is established, but that is a claim to be pursued afterwards rather than a reason to leave a tree on your roof. Document the cost, keep the invoices, and photograph everything before it goes.

Call the council, and call them immediately — this is the one case where somebody else will usually come and deal with it quickly, because a blocked road is their problem. For a state-controlled road it is the Department of Transport and Main Roads. If powerlines are involved it is Energex or Ergon first, always.

Do not stand in the road managing traffic around a fallen tree. That is how the second incident happens.

A tree on the verge or in a park is council’s to remove, and they will generally do so on their own timetable once notified — quickly where it is blocking access or presenting a hazard, less quickly where it has fallen into a park and is inconveniencing nobody.

If a council tree has fallen onto your property, report it and ask for the job reference. Do not remove a council tree yourself without asking, even from your own land, and particularly do not dispose of it — it may be evidence in your own claim, and street trees are protected in their own right.

If the base of the trunk sits across the boundary, both owners are “tree-keepers” under the Neighbourhood Disputes Act, and responsibilities and liabilities are shared equally. That includes the cost of dealing with what is left.

The practical difficulty is that a fallen boundary tree usually needs a decision faster than two neighbours who are already arguing can make one. Agree on make-safe works first and settle the cost split afterwards — in writing, so the agreement survives the next disagreement.

Yours, in the ordinary case. Your home policy covers damage to your property and it generally does not matter where the tree grew. Your insurer may then pursue your neighbour’s insurer to recover what it paid, which happens between the insurers on the evidence and asks nothing further of you. You would only claim directly against your neighbour where their negligence can be shown and the loss is not covered by your own policy — an uninsured loss, a shortfall, or your excess.

You do, when you claim on your own policy, and it is payable regardless of whose tree it was. If your insurer later recovers from the other party’s insurer, the excess is commonly refunded — ask about this explicitly when you lodge, because it is not always volunteered. Where you pursue the tree’s owner directly and succeed, the excess forms part of what you are claiming.

Not automatically. A council is not liable simply because it owned the tree; it is liable if it was negligent. Claim on your comprehensive car insurance first, then lodge a claim with council separately, and give them everything: photographs of the failure point and the stump, the date and time, and above all any record of the tree having been reported before. Councils also have statutory protections that make these claims harder than a claim against a private owner, so take advice if the amount is significant.

That complaint is the most valuable thing you have. Prior notice is what converts “the tree fell” into “the owner knew and did nothing”, which is the heart of a negligence claim. Find the written record — the text, the email, the letter, the council reference number — before you do anything else. A complaint you cannot evidence is much weaker, though not useless if there were witnesses. And if you are reading this because you are about to complain about a tree that is still standing: put it in writing.

Not for a straightforward claim. Where the damage is clear, the cause is obvious and the insurer is paying, a report adds cost and nothing else. It becomes worth having when the cause is in dispute, when the insurer has declined or reduced the claim on the basis that the tree was in poor condition, when you are pursuing the tree’s owner, or when you are the owner and need to establish the tree was sound. In those cases what you need is a report that addresses the failure mechanism and the tree’s condition before it fell — and if the matter may reach a tribunal, an expert witness report prepared to that standard from the start.

Two different clocks, and they are not the same length.

Your insurance policy will have its own notification requirement — usually “as soon as reasonably possible” — and that is measured in days, not months. Notify first and sort out the detail afterwards.

A legal claim against the tree’s owner runs on the Limitation of Actions Act 1974 (Qld). For property damage, an action founded on tort must generally be brought within 6 years of the date the cause of action arose. Where the claim includes damages for personal injury, it is 3 years. Those are outer limits, not targets — evidence degrades, memories fade, and the stump gets ground out. Take advice early if you are heading that way.

Depends where it is lying. If it is on your land, the starting point is that clearing it is your responsibility, however unfair that feels — and you pursue the cost afterwards if negligence is in play. If it is still on their land and now presents a hazard to you, the Neighbourhood Disputes Act process applies to what remains: a fallen trunk and a stump rooted in the land both still count as a “tree” under the Act, so the notice and QCAT route is available. Document the hazard, put your concerns in writing, and see Neighbour Tree Disputes in Queensland for the sequence.