Does Homeowners Insurance Cover Tree Removal After A Storm? (2025)

Homeowners insurance typically covers fallen trees if they damage your home or other insured structures — and the cause is a covered peril like wind, lightning, hail, fire, vandalism or a vehicle crash. Insurance generally pays for both the repair costs and tree removal when:

• A storm knocks a tree onto your house, garage, fence, or shed.
• A tree falls due to fire, explosion, lightning, aircraft, riot, vandalism, theft or a non-owned vehicle, and lands on your property.
• A neighbor’s tree falls onto your home or yard due to a covered event.

It doesn’t matter where the tree came from — your yard, a neighbor’s property or a nearby lot. As long as the event is covered and damage occurs, your insurer typically pays to remove the tree.

Homeowners insurance won’t cover tree removal if the cause isn’t a covered peril — or if there’s no damage to an insured structure. You’re typically not covered if:

• The tree fell due to an excluded event like a flood or earthquake (unless you have separate coverage).
• The tree came down because of age, rot, or disease, which are considered maintenance issues.
• The tree didn’t damage anything when it fell.

One exception: if the fallen tree blocks a driveway, wheelchair ramp, or other critical access point, your insurer may cover removal — even if no structures were damaged.

Even if insurance covers fallen tree damage, prevention is still the safest and most cost-effective approach. Here are steps you can take to reduce the risk:

You can buy homeowners insurance from major providers like State Farm and Progressive, or from newer companies like Lemonade and Hippo. On average, homeowners insurance costs about $175 per month in the U.S., but your rate may vary based on location, coverage levels and risk factors. To find the best deal, compare homeowners insurance quotes across multiple companies. You can also use the calculator below to estimate how much personal property coverage you might need.

In this page, we explained when homeowners insurance covers tree removal — typically only if a tree damages an insured structure or blocks critical access, and the cause is a covered peril. To avoid unexpected costs, it’s important to know your policy’s exclusions, especially for events like floods, earthquakes, or fallen trees with no damage. Maintain your trees regularly, remove obvious hazards, and review your policy limits to ensure you're fully protected.

Understanding how insurance handles fallen trees can be tricky. Here are some frequently asked questions to help clarify what’s covered — and what’s not.

MoneyGeek provides homeowners insurance insights based on real-world data and independent research. We rely on official rate filings from state Departments of Insurance across all 50 states, along with pricing data from Quadrant Information Services, to ensure our information is accurate, up-to-date, and relevant to common coverage questions — including storm-related tree removal.

For this page, we analyzed how standard homeowners insurance policies address tree damage and removal costs after a storm. We also reviewed common exclusions, like neglect and non-covered perils, and evaluated coverage scenarios using a standardized homeowner profile to reflect how policies perform under typical and elevated risk conditions.