Trampolines and home insurance: what actually happens to your policy

Why insurers care about trampolines at all

A trampoline is not a property risk in the way a bad roof is. Nobody worries it will damage the house. The concern is entirely about liability — specifically, the possibility of a serious injury to someone else's child on your property, and a claim that follows.

Home insurance includes personal liability cover, typically starting at $100,000 and often available up to $500,000 or more. That section of the policy is what pays if someone is hurt on your property and you're found responsible. Trampoline injuries tend to be fractures and spinal injuries rather than scrapes, and paediatric injury claims can run high because they can involve long-term care.

So the underwriting question isn't "will this cost us a small claim?" It's "could this produce a claim that exhausts the liability limit?" That is why a piece of garden equipment gets more attention than its price tag suggests.

The attractive nuisance doctrine, briefly

Ordinarily, a property owner owes less of a duty of care to someone who enters without permission. Attractive nuisance is a long-standing exception in US law: if you keep something on your land that is likely to draw children and likely to hurt them, you can be liable even if the child was trespassing.

Swimming pools are the classic example. Trampolines are commonly treated the same way, on the reasoning that a child who sees one over a fence will try to reach it, and a child cannot reasonably assess the danger.

How this applies varies by state, and it's a question for a lawyer rather than an insurer. The practical point for a homeowner is simply that "they shouldn't have been in my garden" is a weaker defence than most people assume.

The three ways insurers actually respond

There is no single industry rule. When you disclose a trampoline, you will get one of three outcomes, and which one depends on the insurer's own appetite rather than anything about you.

1. Covered as normal

Some insurers write the policy without comment, particularly where the trampoline has safety netting and sits in a fenced garden. The trampoline is simply part of the risk they've priced.

2. Covered, with a trampoline exclusion

This is the most common middle path. You get a full policy, but an endorsement removes liability cover for injuries connected to the trampoline. Everything else — fire, theft, a delivery driver slipping on your path — is unaffected.

It's worth reading the wording rather than assuming. Some exclusions are narrow and apply only to the trampoline itself; others are drafted broadly enough to cover anything in that part of the garden.

3. Declined

Some insurers will not write a home with a trampoline at all, regardless of safety features. This is not a judgement about you — it's a category decision made centrally, and no amount of explaining will move it. The answer is a different insurer, not a better argument.

What safety features underwriters ask about

Where an insurer is willing to consider a trampoline, these are the features that come up most often. None of them guarantees acceptance, but their absence makes a decline more likely.

• Safety netting fully enclosing the jumping surface, in good repair with no gaps at the entry point.
• Padding covering the springs and frame edge, which is where a large share of injuries happen.
• A fenced garden with a self-latching, self-closing gate — this addresses the attractive nuisance concern directly.
• Ladders removed when the trampoline is not in use, so a small child can't climb up unsupervised.
• A sunken or ground-level installation, which some insurers view more favourably because the fall height is lower.
• Anchoring, which matters in high-wind areas where an unanchored trampoline becomes a projectile that damages a neighbour's property.

That last point is worth separating out. Wind damage caused by your trampoline landing on someone else's car is a property damage liability claim, not an injury claim, and it can fall outside a trampoline exclusion written narrowly around injuries. Anchoring is cheap and removes an entire category of argument.

Never leave it off the application

This is the part worth being blunt about. A trampoline is visible from the street, visible in aerial imagery, and visible to any adjuster who visits after a claim. Insurers increasingly review aerial photography as part of underwriting and renewal.

If you don't disclose it and someone is injured on it, the insurer is entitled to examine whether the policy was issued on accurate information. A material misrepresentation on an application can support denying the claim, and in some circumstances rescinding the policy altogether — leaving you personally exposed to exactly the claim you bought insurance for.

A trampoline exclusion is an annoyance. An undisclosed trampoline is a potential catastrophe. The gap between those two outcomes is a single honest answer on a form.

What to do if you're shopping with a trampoline

1. 1Disclose it clearly at the quote stage, not after a policy is issued. Being declined at quote costs you nothing; being rescinded after a claim costs you everything.
2. 2Ask specifically whether cover is full, excluded, or conditional on safety features — and get the answer in writing on the policy documents.
3. 3If an exclusion is applied, read the wording. Confirm whether it covers only injuries, or property damage too.
4. 4Compare more than one insurer. Appetite for trampolines varies more than almost any other single feature.
5. 5Ask about a personal umbrella policy if you keep the trampoline. It sits above your home liability limit — though be aware an umbrella usually inherits the underlying policy's exclusions, so it may not fill a trampoline gap.

Common questions