When is a benefit not a benefit? When it's actually a benefit to a third party and not to the intended benefit recipient. If this sounds like double talk that's because it kind of is, especially if you aren't careful about signing away control of your benefit.

Assignment of benefits commonly known as AOB, is a legal tool that allows a third party to be paid for services performed for an insured homeowner who would normally be reimbursed by the insurance company directly after making a claim. Most assignment of benefits agreements presented to the homeowner allow the contractor to stand in the shoes of the homeowner for insurance collection purposes.

This is a long-established procedure intended to allow vendors to receive prompt payment from insurers after doing emergency repair work, particularly when it involves water damage and appliance repair. Now, however, a law intended to help homeowners expedite repairs is being turned into a fraud to gain money for unscrupulous contractors and attorneys. Here's how it works:

You have an emergency situation in your home, a flood from broken pipes or fire or something else that makes your home either not habitable or very inconvenient. Your contractor asks you to sign an assignment of benefits waiver telling you that he will take care of getting the insurance company to pay him directly. Then when inflated claims are presented to the insurance company and disputed or denied, the contractor gets his attorney partner to bring a lawsuit against the insurance company. Per Florida law, the insurance company is responsible for paying both the attorney fees and making good on the inflated estimate from the contractor.

Predictably, because of these lawsuits insurance costs are soaring with Citizens Property Insurance seeing litigated claims jumping to 45 percent in 2016 from 12 percent in 2011. Citizens, which is currently running a surplus because of our very lucky hurricane seasons and beneficial reforms, has succeeded in getting private insurance companies back in the Florida market. But these private insurers are being forced to raise premiums to cover the cost of litigation with the danger of eventually forcing homeowners back into Citizens if their rates get too high or they leave the state.

Already one private insurer stopped writing insurance in southeast Florida where this fraud has really taken off. Citizens is restricted to a 10 percent a year increase and if it starts taking on more policies in addition to facing litigation because of fraudulent claims, it will very quickly be back in the red.

Unfortunately, the Florida legislature is not helping to shut down this fraud. A South Florida legislature at the end of March blocked an effort to stop the scheme by not allowing a bill to remedy this situation procedure through the legislature. The bill would have ended the attorney fee pay back law deflating the attorney's incentive to peruse inflated contractor claims.

So there we are, we finally get Citizens out of the red, private insurers are looking favorably on doing business in Florida and it could all be for nothing. And don't think that just because most of these issues are happening in the Miami Dade area that it doesn't affect us. Losses incurred by Citizens Insurance are spread around to all tax payers in the state.

Homeowners may think assignment of benefits absolves them of their responsibility, and that may be true in the short term but in the long run you may be contributing to a growing fraud that in the end will cost the state of Florida, and ultimately all taxpayers, money. Call your insurance company first, and don't sign anything you're not sure about.