the.com/act of god
The legal system's polite way of blaming the weather instead of your contractor.
means A legal term for a natural event—like a flood, earthquake, or lightning strike—so extreme and unforeseeable that no human planning could have prevented it, often used to excuse liability in contracts and insurance.
from Comes straight out of English legal and insurance language, where it stands in contrast to human negligence — the idea being that some disasters are caused by nature's own hand rather than anyone's carelessness. The phrase has been used in common law and insurance contracts for centuries, long before modern policies spelled out exclusions for floods and quakes, as a tidy shorthand for 'not our fault, not anyone's fault.'
- insurance term
- Excuses insurers from paying for unforeseeable natural disasters
- legal origin
- Rooted in old contract law, not actual theology
- human exclusion
- Doesn't cover floods caused by your own broken pipe
- irony
- Lawyers invoke god only to avoid paying for damages