Claim denied — now what? The first moves.

Day one: preservation

1. Keep the letter, the envelope, and the date. Every later deadline (appeal windows, the suit clock) is measured from dates like these.
2. Photograph the damage again, today — wide and close, with timestamps on. Conditions change; your record shouldn't.
3. Write down what any adjuster said, from memory, with dates. Contemporaneous notes are documents.
4. Do not sign anything — no settlement, no release, no assignment — in the first days. Nothing at this stage is urgent enough to sign unread.
5. Find your policy — the full form, not just the declarations page. The fight is in the conditions: Loss Settlement, appraisal, suit deadline. If you don't have the full form, request it in writing; insurers must provide it (Colorado, for example, requires a copy within 3 business days of a request).

Days two to seven: aim the fight

• Read the letter for its stated reason and sort it: fact fight (wear and tear), language fight (exclusion), amount fight (paid too little), or non-decision (closed with no reason). The hub maps each to its door.
• If anything about the determination is oral or missing, demand it in writing — reason, policy language, facts relied on.
• Start the evidence set: event records, dated photos, a contractor's line-item estimate.
• Calendar the clocks: the appeal path's deadlines, and your policy's suit deadline — the hard wall behind everything.

Then run the campaign: the fight page sequences the appeal, the supplement, appraisal, and the state complaint. And if money is also being held back on a partially-paid part of the claim, run the checker — the holdback has its own deadline, running in parallel.