Short Answer Since Germany's 2008 insurance reform, gross negligence no longer voids your claim automatically — the insurer may only reduce the payout in proportion to your share of fault, and only deliberate intent cancels it entirely. Describe what happened factually, and never write legal self-classifications like "careless" or "negligent" into the report — that assessment is the insurer's job, not yours. What Most Expats Don't Realize You filled out a claim report for a shattered window pane and helpfully wrote that you had been "careless" to leave the room while the window stood unlatched. The adjuster seized on your own vocabulary, classified the event as *grobe Fahrlässigkeit*, and cut the payout in half under the proportional-reduction rule. You covered €900 out of pocket — not because of what happened, but because you wrote a legal conclusion about yourself that the facts never required. What To Do * Take immediate, time-stamped photographs of the damaged property and keep the physical debris as evidence until the claim settles. * Describe the plain sequence of observable events without adjectives — and never invent a more favorable version, because a false damage report is criminal insurance fraud. * "Ich schildere den Hergang wie folgt:" (I describe the sequence of events as follows:) — Open your report with this line and let a neutral chronology of facts speak for itself. The Truth Germany's insurance infrastructure is optimized to mine your own vocabulary for exclusion leverage. The system punishes confession-style adjectives and creative fiction with equal efficiency — the only language it cannot use against you is a plain statement of what happened.