You insure your car to protect yourself and your family in the event that someone using the car causes injury to someone else. But did you know that your car insurance can also protect you and your family from drivers who are not responsible enough to have auto insurance?
The State of Connecticut, like most states, requires that car owners maintain liability insurance to cover damages when the driver of their car causes injuries or property damage. In addition, many states, including Connecticut, require car insurance policies to provide protection to the occupants of your car from injuries caused by the driver of an uninsured vehicle.
Unfortunately, our state only requires injury liability coverage of $20,000 per person and $40,000 per accident. What that means is that there are thousands of drivers out there who, if they cause serious injury to a member of your family, are virtually uninsured.
Uninsured motorist coverage also protects you in the event you –or anyone in your vehicle- are injured by a driver whose insurance isn’t enough to cover the injuries. That is called underinsured motorist coverage.
Every motorist insurance policy has underinsured motorist coverage. The question is: How much is enough? To answer that question, we first must discuss how much liability insurance is enough. You should really be carrying a minimum of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident (even that isn’t nearly enough in the event a claim for death or catastrophic injuries such as paralysis – which is why, if you own a home, we strongly recommend that you talk to your insurance agent about low cost umbrella liability coverage).
If you do maintain $100,000/300,000 coverage, your insurance company will likely offer you the same limits in uninsured/underinsured (UM) coverage. However, for a couple of dollars a month, you have the ability to double that UM coverage. What that means is that each occupant of your vehicle can now recover up to $200,000 for a serious injury caused by the negligence of a driver without enough insurance. You need to insist on maximizing this coverage.
Finally, you should ask your insurance agent about uninsured motorist conversion coverage (again a very small expense). Without conversion coverage, if you have a serious injury requiring $300,000 (or more) of compensation, and the responsible driver only has $100,00o in insurance, your $200,000 in UM coverage would only provide you an additional $100,000 ($200,000 less the $100,000 you get from the other drivers insurance company. With conversion coverage, your $200,000 is IN ADDITION TO the $100,000 coverage of the other vehicle, allowing you to be compensated up to $300,000.
The additional protection of doubling the liability coverage and adding conversion can be obtained at minimal cost. But if you ever need it, the benefits are enormous.
You are welcome to call 866-668-7179 or e-mail our law office to contact a professional who can help with your personal injury issues. If you cannot come to the office, we will come to your hospital room or home. We want to help you and your family through this.