New Brunswick Section B Claim Deadlines
The dates that govern a New Brunswick Section B claim. Free. No email required. For drivers, passengers, cyclists and people on foot.
New Brunswick runs several clocks at once and they have nothing to do with each other. Section B is your own insurer paying for treatment and lost income whoever caused the crash. A lawsuit against the at fault driver is separate. Missing one does not affect the other, which is exactly why people lose the one they were not watching.
THE NINE CLOCKS
Three of the nine run out inside your first month, and one of them is gone by tomorrow. The rest are longer, and each counts from its own event. Not drawn to scale.
Inside the first month Longer, and each counts from its own event
Missing one does not automatically end your claim. The two Section B dates are written as thirty days, or ninety days, or as soon as practicable thereafter, and the notice you serve on the Crown has a seven day extension built into it. What none of them tolerate is silence. Everything below sets out each clock, what actually starts it, and what to write down while it is still running.
How long do you have to notify your insurer in New Brunswick?
Thirty days from the accident, or as soon as practicable after that. The notice is written, it goes to your own insurer rather than the other driver's, and it is delivered personally or sent by registered mail to the insurer's chief agency or head office in the province. It is what opens Section B for medical treatment, rehabilitation and disability income.
Before any of that, there is the scene itself. Stop. Help anyone injured. Exchange information. Report to police if anyone was hurt or killed. Those duties are immediate, and everything else on this page is counted from the same day.
Or as soon as practicable is a mercy in the wording. It is not a second deadline.
Write down before you hang up. The date and time you called. The name of the person who answered. Your claim number. Which forms they are sending and when they said they would send them. None of that is on file anywhere else.
A phone call is not the written notice. Call by all means, because it gets a claim number moving. Then send the notice in writing to the chief agency or head office in the province, personally or by registered mail, and keep the proof of sending with the date on it.
If the other driver was uninsured or cannot be identified, a second written notice is due to your insurer inside the same thirty days. It is a different notice saying a different thing, and it is set out further down this page.
How long do you have to send the Section B proof of claim?
The proof of claim is ninety days from the accident, not ninety days from the day the insurer asks you for it. Both periods run from the same event, and both carry the same softener in the policy: within the period, or as soon as practicable after that. The insurer can also require a physician's certificate covering the cause and nature of the accident and how long the disability lasted.
This is the line most often got wrong, including on an earlier version of this page. If you have been waiting for a form to arrive before sending anything, the ninety days did not wait with you. Ask for the form, and note the date you asked.
Where the other driver was uninsured or cannot be identified, a proof of claim also goes in within ninety days of the accident, alongside the ordinary Section B one.
The physician's certificate is worth planning for rather than reacting to. It asks for the cause and nature of the accident and how long the disability lasted, which is easier to answer where somebody has been recording what you could not do, week by week, from the beginning.
What do you have to do if the other driver cannot be identified in New Brunswick?
Twenty four hours, and this one is easy to lose. Where your injuries come from an accident involving an unidentified automobile, you have to report the accident within twenty four hours, or as soon after as practicable, to a peace officer, a judicial officer or an administrator of motor vehicle laws.
A hit and run at night, with nobody hurt badly enough to call an ambulance, is exactly the case where this clock runs out unnoticed. You go home, you ache in the morning, and by the time you think about insurance the twenty four hours has gone.
If that is where you are, report it now anyway and write down why the report is late. The period carries the same as soon after as practicable wording as the rest of them.
Then thirty days to tell your insurer in writing. The written notice has to say that you have a cause of action arising out of the accident against a person whose identity cannot be ascertained, and set out the facts that support it. A separate notice of claim also goes to the insurer within thirty days, with a detailed proof of claim within ninety days of the accident.
If you sue anyone else involved, copy your insurer immediately. A claimant who starts an action against another person owning or operating an automobile involved in the accident has to deliver a copy of the notice of action to the insurer's chief agency or head office without delay. An action against the insurer under this coverage runs on two years from the date the cause of action arose.
The same written notice and the same ninety day proof of claim apply where the other driver is known but uninsured. The difference is only which of the two facts you are asserting, so if you are not sure yet whether the driver was uninsured or is simply unfindable, send the notice and say so.
What do you need for income replacement in New Brunswick?
The inability to work has to begin inside thirty days and last at least seven. The test in the policy is that within thirty days of the accident, and as a result of it, you suffer substantial inability to perform the essential duties of your occupation or employment for a period of not less than seven days. You also have to have been employed at the date of the accident, or to be treated as employed because you were so engaged for any six months out of the preceding twelve.
The weekly payment is eighty per cent of your gross weekly income less income replacement available to you elsewhere, to a maximum of two hundred and fifty dollars a week. Payments run to a maximum of one hundred and four weeks, and beyond that only where the injury continuously prevents you from any work you are reasonably suited to by education, training or experience. A principal unpaid housekeeper who is completely incapacitated receives one hundred dollars a week for up to fifty two weeks.
Seasonal and irregular work is where this gets argued. The six months out of the preceding twelve rule exists precisely so that someone between seasons is not treated as unemployed, so bring the record of what you actually earned rather than accepting a first refusal.
If your claim were decided tomorrow, what would your file say?
People who were genuinely hurt have lost benefits over a date nobody recorded, a form that arrived late, or a call nobody wrote down. Caught early that is fixable. A year on it is an argument you have to win. The New Brunswick MVA Companion Guide keeps every date on this page in one place, with the form that goes with each and room to write down what actually happened. $24.99, yours to keep.
How long does Section B pay for treatment in New Brunswick?
Four years, to a limit of fifty thousand dollars. The benefit period for medical and rehabilitation expenses starts on the day of the accident and ends four years after it. Funeral expenses are covered to two thousand five hundred dollars. Where a death follows the accident, the death benefit applies if death occurs within one hundred and eighty days, or within one hundred and four weeks where there has been continuous disability in between.
| Section B benefit | What the policy allows |
|---|---|
| Medical and rehabilitation | Up to $50,000, within four years of the accident |
| Weekly income replacement | 80% of gross weekly income, less income replacement available elsewhere, to $250 a week |
| How long income replacement runs | Up to 104 weeks, and beyond that only where you cannot do any work you are reasonably suited to |
| Principal unpaid housekeeper | $100 a week for up to 52 weeks, where completely incapacitated |
| Funeral expenses | $2,500 |
| Death benefit | Where death occurs within 180 days, or within 104 weeks where there has been continuous disability in between |
Four years is the outer edge of the benefit period, not permission to start late. Nothing inside it is payable until the notice and the proof of claim are in, and both of those are counted in days rather than years.
How long does your insurer have to pay you in New Brunswick?
Thirty days from proof of claim. Every Section B amount other than loss of income is payable within thirty days after the insurer receives proof of claim. Initial loss of income benefits are payable within thirty days after proof of claim, and then within each thirty day period while the insurer remains liable, provided you furnish proof of continuing disability when you are asked for it.
Sixty days under the statutory conditions. For insurance money the insurer is liable for under the contract generally, payment is due within sixty days after it receives the proof of loss, or within fifteen days after an appraisal award. Note the date on every letter and every form you send, because these clocks are the ones that put pressure back where it belongs.
Every deadline on this page runs against somebody. Two of them run against your insurer, and both are measured from a date you control.
Are there shorter deadlines if the government was involved?
Yes, and they are dramatically shorter. If your claim involves the Crown, two months of previous written notice has to be served on the Attorney General, or on the corporation where you are suing a Crown corporation. The notice has to state the name and residence of the proposed plaintiff, the cause of action, and the court in which the action is to be brought.
There is a small mercy built into that rule. Where the notice is served before the limitation period expires and the two month period ends after it expires, the limitation period is extended by seven days after the end of the two month period. Serving notice late in the window does not automatically cost you the action.
A local government is ninety days. Under the Local Governance Act, a person who intends to bring an action against a local government for damages for personal injury has to notify the clerk within ninety days after the event. A collision caused by an unrepaired road, a missing sign, an unploughed street or a municipal vehicle can all land here.
And ninety days is gone while you are still in treatment.
How long do you have to sue after a car accident in New Brunswick?
Two years from the day the claim was discovered. A claim is discovered on the day you first knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that the injury or loss had occurred, that it was caused by an act or omission, and that the act or omission was the defendant's. Discovery rather than the accident date matters where an injury took time to reveal itself. A fifteen year outer limit runs from the act or omission whether or not you could have discovered it.
Suing your own insurer over Section B is one year, not two. The policy is explicit: every action or proceeding against the insurer for the recovery of a Section B claim has to be commenced within one year from the date on which the cause of action arose. That date is usually the day the insurer refused or stopped paying, not the day of the crash.
One year and two years sit side by side in the same file, pointed at two different opponents.
Someone who reads a general two year rule and applies it to a cut off benefit can be months out of time before anyone tells them. If a benefit stops, write down the date it stopped.
For a person under nineteen the clock does not start until they turn nineteen, though evidence does not wait that long and memories fade on the ordinary schedule.
Can you claim Section B and sue the at fault driver at the same time?
Yes. They are two files, with two opponents and two clocks. Section B does not ask who caused the crash, and it does not close because you are also claiming against the other driver. The claim against the at fault driver is the separate one, and it runs on the two year discovery clock rather than on anything in your own policy.
The minor injury cap is the part to ask about early. What a New Brunswick settlement is worth is affected by the cap on minor personal injuries, and that is a question to have answered before you agree to anything rather than after. This page does not carry the cap figure, because it is not one of the deadlines it verifies. Recovering after a car accident in New Brunswick covers what the cap does to a settlement, and it is free to read.
Nothing in the Section B file waits for the other claim. The thirty days, the ninety days and the one year against your own insurer all run while a lawsuit is being prepared, and none of them pauses because a lawyer is dealing with the other side.
What happens if you missed a New Brunswick claim deadline?
Missing one is serious. It is not always the end. The Section B notice and proof of claim deadlines are written as thirty days or ninety days or as soon as practicable thereafter. Lateness with a real explanation, a hospital stay or symptoms that surfaced weeks later, sits inside the wording of the policy rather than outside it. Lateness you cannot explain is what sinks a claim.
The uninsured motorist reporting and notice periods carry the same phrase. The Crown notice carries its own seven day extension. What none of them tolerate is silence, so if a date has gone by, the answer is a lawyer and a written explanation rather than hoping nobody noticed.
Write the explanation down today, while you still remember it clearly. Which weeks you could not manage your own affairs. Who was helping you. When you first understood you were injured rather than shaken. Which day the symptoms you are now being treated for actually started.
As soon as practicable is a test about your circumstances, and your circumstances are the one part of the file nobody else is recording.
Did the New Brunswick deadlines change in 2026?
This page records no change to the underlying rules in 2026. What changed is what the page said about them. An earlier version said the ninety day proof of claim ran from the day the insurer requested it. It runs from the date of the accident. If you read that version and counted your ninety days from the letter asking you for a form, count again from the accident.
That same version carried four deadlines rather than the full set, and left out three that matter: the twenty four hour report for an unidentified driver, the one year limit on suing your own insurer over Section B, and the ninety day notice to a local government. The correction is dated 8 August 2026 and is set out in full in the verification block below.
That is the honest answer to this question. If a rule itself moves, the verification block is where it will be said, with the date it was checked.
Do I need a lawyer to make a New Brunswick claim?
Not to open the Section B file. The notice is a letter to your own insurer, in writing, inside thirty days, delivered personally or sent by registered mail to the chief agency or head office in the province. The proof of claim is a form and a date. Neither step asks for representation, and neither one is improved by waiting for it.
Where a date has already gone by, the answer changes. That is the point at which a lawyer and a written explanation beat hoping nobody noticed, and the explanation is stronger the sooner it is written.
The parts worth advice early are the ones with a court at the end of them. One year to sue your own insurer over Section B. Two years to sue the at fault driver, and the minor injury cap sitting behind whatever that claim settles for. Two months of notice to the Attorney General before an action against the Crown, and ninety days to the clerk before one against a local government, both of which have to be served before the action starts rather than during it.
Whatever you decide about representation, the dates and the notes are yours to make. No lawyer taken on in month eleven can reconstruct the record you did not keep in month one.
Dates are only half of it. Knowing when something is due does not tell you what Section B actually pays for and for how long, what the minor injury cap does to a settlement or what to do when a benefit is cut off.
Recovering after a car accident in New Brunswick covers the whole process and is free to read. Hurt in another province? Start from the guides by province and territory.
Last verified: August 2026
Checked against: the New Brunswick Standard Automobile Owner's Policy, N.B.P.F. No. 1, Section B, Section D and the statutory conditions; the Limitation of Actions Act, section 5; the Proceedings Against the Crown Act, section 15; and the Province's own reference guide to the Local Governance Act.
Corrected on 8 August 2026. An earlier version of this page said the ninety day proof of claim ran from the day the insurer requested it. It runs from the date of the accident. That version also carried four deadlines and left out the twenty four hour report for an unidentified driver, the one year limit on suing your own insurer over Section B, and the ninety day notice to a local government.
Deadlines change. If you find something on this page that is out of date, write to Recovery@hurtsquare.ca and we will correct it publicly.
Keeping the record these deadlines depend on
Read the nine clocks again and count how many of them start on a date that exists only in your own notes. The day a benefit stopped. The day you first could not do your job. The day you understood you were injured. Nobody is writing those down for you.
Recovery First. Pressure Last.
EVERYTHING ON THIS PAGE, AND WHAT COMES NEXT
The New Brunswick MVA Companion Guide
This page tells you the dates. The guide walks you through them, and gives you somewhere to write down what happened on each one.
- Every deadline on this page, with what starts each clock
- The Section B limits in one place, and what each one runs out on
- What the notice and the proof of claim have to say, and where they go
- Fillable on your phone, at 11pm, in bed
$24.99 · instant download · yours to keep
See the New Brunswick MVA Companion GuideEn français : le Guide d'accompagnement au rétablissement, édition du Nouveau-Brunswick couvre les mêmes échéances et les mêmes formulaires, en français.
Most people take it with the National MVA Recovery Guide, the daily record of symptoms, appointments, calls and costs these dates hang on. People who have only one tend to end up with a careful record aimed at the wrong process, or the right dates and nothing to put in front of them.
The scene checklist for the first three days is at hurtsquare.ca/72. It is free and asks nothing of you.
This page is general information for people in New Brunswick. It is not legal or medical advice. Rules differ by province and change over time. Confirm anything specific to your situation with a lawyer or your insurer.