The letters that arrive after a car accident

Almost everything that arrives after a crash falls into one of four groups: letters from an insurance company, bills and statements from medical providers, notices about a lien or reimbursement claim, and advertising. They overlap in tone and often in vocabulary, which is exactly why people answer the wrong one first.

1. Insurance correspondence

These come from your own insurer or from the other driver's, and they are usually the first to arrive. Common types:

• Acknowledgement of claim. Confirms a claim number and names an adjuster. Informational.
• Requests for information. A recorded statement, a medical authorization, proof of loss, wage records. Your duty to cooperate generally runs to your own insurer under your policy; a request from the other side's insurer is a request, not an order.
• Reservation of rights. Says the insurer is investigating while reserving the ability to deny coverage later. It is not a denial and not an admission.
• Coverage decision or denial. Should state a reason and, in most states, explain how to appeal or complain. State regulators publish deadlines insurers must meet for acknowledging and deciding claims.
• Subrogation notice. Your own insurer, or your health plan, telling you it intends to recover what it paid from the at-fault party or from your settlement.

Insurer conduct — how quickly claims are acknowledged, how denials are explained — is regulated at state level. The state insurance department directory lists the office that takes complaints where you live.

2. Medical bills and statements

A bill and an explanation of benefits are different documents. The EOB comes from your health plan and shows what was billed, what the plan allowed, what it paid and what it says you may owe. The bill comes from the provider. When they disagree, the disagreement is usually the real story.

• Check whether the provider billed your health insurance at all. After a crash some providers hold the bill against a future settlement instead — which is how liens begin.
• Emergency and certain out-of-network care is covered by the federal No Surprises Act, which limits balance billing in defined situations and gives you a way to dispute charges.
• Unpaid balances that go to collections bring separate rights: written validation of the debt, and the ability to dispute it in writing.

3. Lien and reimbursement notices

A lien notice says someone intends to be paid out of money you may receive later. In the crash context it usually comes from a hospital or treating provider, from a health plan asserting a reimbursement right, or from a government payer.

Two features distinguish a lien notice from a bill. First, it is generally a claim against a future settlement or judgment rather than a demand that you pay today. Second, in many states a hospital lien only takes effect if it is recorded with a county office within a set time and served on the right parties. Arizona's statute, for example, creates the lien right in A.R.S. §33-931 and then requires recording with the county recorder under §33-932. Texas sets out its own scheme in Property Code Chapter 55, and California in Civil Code §3045.1. The details — who may file, deadlines, caps on amount — differ in each.

Separately, if Medicare paid for accident-related care, the federal Medicare Secondary Payer rules give Medicare a recovery claim, handled through the Benefits Coordination & Recovery Center. Employer health plans governed by ERISA often assert their own contractual reimbursement rights. These are not county filings and are checked differently.

Third-party notice services also exist: companies that mail you a notice about a lien someone else filed. American Bureau of Liens is one of them, and we look at its letter in detail on its own page.

4. Attorney and provider advertising

Crash reports are public records in many states, and lists drawn from them are sold. That is why a law firm, chiropractor or "accident help center" you never contacted can write to you within days.

• Advertising mail may look official — window envelopes, case numbers, deadlines in bold. Look for the word advertisement, which many state bar rules require on solicitation mail.
• Lawyer solicitation is governed by state professional-conduct rules modelled on ABA Model Rule 7.3. Your state bar handles complaints about mail that misleads.
• You can verify that any attorney writing to you is licensed and in good standing through your state's bar directory before responding.

Why receiving a letter proves nothing on its own

Anyone can print a document, and a document can be accurate, mistaken, outdated or fraudulent while looking identical in the mailbox. A letter is a claim about the world; it is not itself evidence of a debt, a filing or an obligation. The things that do establish those facts sit elsewhere: the recorded document in the county register, the policy language, the itemized bill and EOB, the plan document, the court file.

So the useful question is never "does this look real?" but "where would the underlying record be, and can I look at it?"