NATICK, Mass. -- A Natick family is locked in a battle with their insurance company after they were told by doctors to leave their home when toxic mold made the family sick.

NewsCenter 5's Rhondella Richardson reported that Gary Zinck, a Framingham firefighter, and his wife, Andrea, depend on a small group of friends for a place to sleep at night and a shoulder to cry on every day they fight Hanover Insurance Group for the money to fix up their mold-infested Natick home.

After living at 24 Appleton Road for 14 years, a doctor ordered the couple and their three children to move out last year. The family is still paying the mortgage on the home.

"I have a 2,000-square-foot home with 7,000 square feet of mold. It's in every wall," said Gary Zinck.

The freezing and thawing of snow and ice four years ago caused an ice dam. The insurance company paid a $3,000 claim for a cosmetic fix for a wet wall.

"Hanover should have checked the moisture in the walls. They should have done a moisture check and they didn't," said Andrea Zinck.

Mold festered in the home for three another years, before Andrea Zinck was diagnosed with toxic mold syndrome.

"I had tremors, headaches, confusion, restless legs syndrome," she said.

The money for temporary housing from Hanover Insurance ran out when the Zincks refused the company's proposal for remediators to clean up the mold instead of rebuilding. A representative for Hanover Insurance told NewsCenter 5 that its experts don't think the house needed to be torn down. Hanover offered the family $127,000 to clean up the ice dam damage, other interior leaks and to pay for periodic mold tests and future repairs.

"If they want to move one of their family in, then fine. They can be the guinea pigs," Gary Zinck said.

"(Doctors) said if I stayed in the house that I would have (multiple sclerosis) and irreversible nerve damage," Andrea Zinck said.

The company doing the clean up wants the family to sign a waiver stating there's no guarantee mold won't come back and if it does, the remediators aren't liable.

The family received a letter from Hanover Insurance that offered to pay for more temporary housing if they take the case to a mediator.