The insurance company may refuse to pay losses that occur from not taking such reasonable care. Make an inventory of damaged personal property showing in detail the quantity, description, original purchase price, purchase date, damage estimate and replacement cost. These might include the mortgage holder, a separated or divorced spouse or a lien holder. A pre-fire inventory along with videotape of all your property could prove to be a valuable record when making your claim. When adjusting your fire loss or in claiming a casualty loss on your Federal income tax, you will have to deal with various viewpoints on the value of your property.
Personal items have a certain sentimental value.
This term is not meant to belittle their value to you but is used to separate feelings about the value from objective measures of value. It will be objective measures of value that you, the insurer, and the Internal Revenue Service will use as a common ground. Receipts will help verify the cost price. This is what you could have gotten for the item if you had sold it the day before the fire. Its price would reflect its cost at purchase and the wear it had sustained since then.