Does my excess policy follow form over abuse coverage?

A follow-form excess policy adopts the terms, conditions and exclusions of the layer beneath it and simply provides more limit. In theory that makes a tower behave as one policy with a bigger number on it.

In practice, excess markets add their own wording. Sometimes it is a short list of exclusions that apply notwithstanding the underlying form. Sometimes it is a wholesale restatement. Either way, the phrase follow form on a proposal is not a guarantee, and the layer wording is the only thing that settles it.

Abuse and molestation coverage at the primary level is typically granted as a sublimit rather than at the full limit. An excess market being asked to follow that grant is being asked to provide abuse coverage above a sublimit, which is a different and larger exposure than following an ordinary bodily injury grant.

Many decline. The result is a tower where the abuse coverage stops at the primary sublimit even though the general liability coverage continues upward, and in a class where abuse produces the largest verdicts, the gap sits exactly where the money is.

There is a related problem that also lives in excess wording. Excess policies describe when they attach, and the language commonly requires the underlying limit to be exhausted by payment of damages.

If your primary erodes by defense costs, a substantial part of it may be consumed by lawyers rather than by damages. That creates a genuine argument about whether the underlying was exhausted in the way the excess requires, and therefore about whether the excess ever attaches. The argument happens while a case is live.

Ask for a tower schedule listing every layer, the market, the attachment point, the limit, and any wording that departs from the layer below. A broker who works in this class can produce it; if nobody can, that is itself informative.

Then read three things on each layer: how abuse is treated, how assault and battery is treated, and how exhaustion is defined. Those three answers tell you whether you have one tower or several disconnected policies stacked on top of each other.

The cleanest fix is a dedicated abuse tower: excess abuse limits bought specifically, sitting above the primary sublimit, rather than hoping the general excess follows. That is available in the senior care markets and it is priced against your screening and supervision controls rather than against the general rate.

The alternative is to accept that your effective abuse limit is the primary sublimit and to size that sublimit accordingly, which usually means negotiating it up. What is not defensible is carrying a large tower, believing it covers abuse, and finding out otherwise at a claim.