Care, Custody & Control

What Care, Custody & Control Coverage Does

Care, Custody & Control — often shortened to CCC — is liability coverage for horses that are in your care but are not yours. If you board, train, transport, school or otherwise take responsibility for someone else’s horse, you have accepted a legal duty of care for an animal that may be worth a considerable amount of money. Care, Custody & Control responds when a non-owned horse in your keeping becomes sick, is injured or dies as a result of negligence by you or by one of your employees.

That exposure is one of the most commonly overlooked in the horse industry, because it sits in a gap that general liability policies were never written to fill. A standard commercial general liability policy is designed to protect you when someone else’s person or property is harmed by your operations — but property in your own care, custody and control is typically excluded from that cover. In other words, the very horses you are paid to look after are the ones a general liability policy will not answer for. Care, Custody & Control is the endorsement or policy that closes that gap.

“All the Horses at My Barn Are Insured by Their Owners”

This is the single most frequent objection we hear, and it is worth addressing directly. If the horses are not yours, then yes — you absolutely still need Care, Custody & Control coverage.

An owner’s mortality policy protects the owner’s financial interest in their own horse. It does not protect you, the barn, against a claim that your negligence caused the loss. In fact, where a carrier pays an owner’s mortality claim and believes the death or injury was caused by a third party’s negligence, that carrier may look to recover its outlay from whoever was responsible. If that is you, the owner being insured does nothing to shield your business. Care, Custody & Control is what stands between a negligence allegation and your own assets.

There is also a reputational and commercial dimension. Boarders and clients increasingly ask what coverage a facility carries before they move a horse in, and being able to answer that question clearly is a genuine advantage when you are competing for business.

Who Needs This Coverage

Any equine business that takes temporary possession of horses belonging to other people should be looking at Care, Custody & Control. That typically includes:

• Boarding facilities that house client-owned horses, full-care or partial-care.
• Trainers who take horses in for schooling, conditioning or sales preparation.
• Riding schools and lesson programmes where client horses are ridden or handled by staff.
• Layup, rehabilitation and breeding operations that hold horses for extended periods.
• Haulers and transporters moving horses they do not own.

If you operate a boarding facility, Care, Custody & Control is only one part of the picture. The coverages we would normally review with a boarding operation are Equine Commercial Liability, Care, Custody & Control, and possibly an excess liability policy sitting above both. You should also give serious consideration to Workers’ Compensation coverage for anyone working on the property.

How Limits Are Usually Structured

Care, Custody & Control limits are generally written on a per-horse basis together with an aggregate limit for the whole policy, and the number of non-owned horses in your care at any one time is a key underwriting factor. When your agent asks how many horses you board, how many are in training and how many are school horses, those numbers are what shape both the limits and the premium.

Two practical points follow from that. First, your limits should reflect the real value of the horses you keep, not an average. A single client horse worth substantially more than the rest of the barn can expose you well beyond a conservative per-horse limit. Second, the numbers on your policy need to keep pace with your business. If you have taken on a second barn, added a training division or started accepting sales horses, tell your agent — an exposure that is not listed on the policy is an exposure that is not covered.

The Coverages That Usually Sit Alongside It

Care, Custody & Control is rarely bought in isolation, because a working equine business faces several distinct liability exposures at once:

• Equine Commercial Liability protects you where a third party, rather than a horse, suffers injury or property damage arising from your operations.
• Farm and Ranch (Commercial Package) cover brings property, general liability and vehicles together for the facility itself — the barns, sheds, tack, equipment and structures used in the business.
• Workers’ Compensation and Employers Liability covers employees who are injured or become ill in the course of their work. In California, every employer is required to carry it, even for a single part-time employee.
• Excess or umbrella liability sits above the underlying policies where the values involved justify a higher ceiling.

A gap that catches many family horse operations is relying on a Homeowner’s policy for liability. Losses arising from business pursuits are excluded on a homeowner policy, which can leave a boarding or training operation to self-insure a potentially catastrophic liability loss out of personal assets. A Farm Owners policy generally provides the same protections as homeowners, often with a discount for packaging the home with the liability, and keeps personal and commercial liability with one company rather than two carriers arguing over which policy a claim belongs to.

A Warning About Trading Labour for Board

One arrangement comes up constantly at boarding barns and creates a real insurance problem: allowing a boarder to work off part of their stall rent by cleaning stalls or helping around the yard. Even though no money changes hands, the trade has a value and is considered remuneration — which creates a Workers’ Compensation issue. To be properly insured, the boarding stable would need Workers’ Compensation cover, and the value of the board or rent being exchanged should be declared on your payroll reports. The same applies to anyone receiving accommodation in return for stall cleaning or other work around the ranch.

Adding Lessons, Clinics and Club Events

Activities that sit slightly outside the day-to-day boarding operation need to be declared rather than assumed. If you provide riding instruction on your farm, you should have a liability policy for the farm in place, and you need to make certain your agent has that instruction exposure listed on the policy. Where a riding club runs shows, the club would need to declare the show on its policy as a public event day — and even then, most liability policies exclude participants while they are competing, and do not extend to officers and directors. A separate policy is generally required for those exposures.

The underlying principle is consistent across every equine liability policy: if it is not listed on the policy, it is not covered. The time to review what you actually do — and who is on your property doing it — is before a claim, not after one.

Review Your Barn’s Liability Programme

Equine Insurance, a division of Parker General Insurance, has spent over 40 years arranging coverage for boarding facilities, trainers and equine businesses across the Western United States. Our agents can review how your operation is structured today and identify where the gaps sit.

To get started, request a free quote or complete the trainers liability and stable liability questionnaire. You may also want to read about Workers’ Compensation and Employers Liability and the Farm and Ranch commercial package, which most boarding operations carry alongside Care, Custody & Control.