Every answer and its explanation appears here once you have finished the path. Each one then links to the matching glossary entry, where the concept is set out in full with its worked example.
1. A title claim succeeds and the painting is returned. Why does no property policy respond?
Because a title claim leaves the value intact and destroys ownership: it strikes the right and not the object
A property policy indemnifies harm to the object, and the object is intact: what has disappeared is the right to dispose of it. It is the exact inverse of a deattribution, where the object stays with the owner and loses its value, and no property cover responds in either case, for two symmetrical reasons. Good faith, invoked by another answer, is what allowed the collector to believe it had validly acquired; it creates no cover and excludes none.
Glossary entry →2. The insurer had paid 180,000 euros in 2015 for water damage. What does the 2024 restitution change about that payment?
Insurable interest is also assessed at the date of loss: it is then established that it had none, and the question of recovering the payment arises, without its answer being settled
A restitution does not extinguish the interest as of its date, it establishes that it never existed, and that retroactivity is what reopens the 2015 payment. Whether the insurer can recover it depends on the applicable law and on how the interest was described in the contract: the question arises, and nobody saw it coming. The two categorical answers, nothing changes or automatic repayment, share the flaw of closing an open question. And turning against the heirs has no basis: they committed no fault and recover a work restored at the expense of an insurer with which they never contracted, which subrogation does not remedy for want of a third party liable for the water damage.
Glossary entry →3. What is the only recourse that could exist, and why is it not necessarily extinguished after twenty-six years?
The 1998 dealer's title warranty: a seller cannot transfer what it did not own
A title warranty often survives where an authenticity warranty is extinguished, and that distinction must be in mind before concluding there is nothing left to do: two warranties from the same seller do not prescribe alike, because they do not bear on the same thing. Contested authenticity bears on a quality of the object; a title defect bears on what the seller had power to transfer. That is where to look first, before even writing to the insurer.
Glossary entry →4. The module names a decisive fact, and it dates from 1998. Which one?
The provenance file stopped at 1952, the invoice said so, and that visible gap was insurable at the time by a product that is not property insurance
The gap was not hidden, it was written on the invoice and nobody acted on it: that is what makes the file instructive rather than unlucky. A provenance gap named at underwriting is a risk that can be treated, through a title warranty; a gap kept silent is a defect in the contract. Here it was named, therefore treatable, and the product existed. The other answers hunt for a clue that should have been spotted, whereas the clue was visible and already recorded.
Glossary entry →5. The module contrasts two symmetrical losses that no property cover reaches. Which ones?
The title claim, which leaves the value and destroys ownership, and deattribution, which leaves ownership and destroys the value
Both fall outside a property policy for opposite reasons, and that symmetry makes them easy to retain: in one case the object is intact and no longer yours, in the other it is yours and worth nothing. A property policy requires physical harm, and neither involves any. Theft and disappearance, proposed by another answer, are on the contrary at the heart of the cover: they raise a question of proof, not a question of scope.
Glossary entry →