The Other Side of Under-Insured Motorist - YOU

In a prior posting, we talked about why it's a good idea to have Uninsured and Under-Insured Motorist coverages on your car insurance policies.

In brief, the Under-Insured Motorist coverage takes care of your injuries in the event the other driver's at fault and doesn't have adequate coverage to pay for your medical bills (and those of your passengers).

But what happens if you're the one at fault and your coverage isn't enough to cover the other people's medical costs?

If you have no assets, usually the answer is nothing, but we all have assets including those we don't think about.

Assets include your home, your car(s), bank accounts, and one most people don't contemplate - wages. If you work for a salary or wages, and the other driver sues you and obtains a judgment, up to 25% of your take-home pay can be seized to pay off that judgment.

So, the bottom line is it might be time to consider increasing your auto liability coverage. If your limits are the state-required minimums of 15/30/15 and you have any of the assets described above, failure to increase your limits could be devastating.

For those who aren't sure what those limits mean, by the way, that's $15 thousand maximum per injured person, $30 thousand maximum per occurrence (no matter how many people in the other car are hurt) and $15 thousand maximum in property damage.

In other words, crashing into a Mercedes SUV with six or seven people in it could put you at substantial risk if you're under-insured.

The really good news after all of the above gloom-and-doom is that increasing your coverage is very inexpensive. Give us a call (602-466-2636 or 480-628-9786) and we'll explain more and run some numbers for you.