What would you do if you were severely injured in an auto, bicycle, or motorcycle accident and the responsible person did not have insurance or did not have enough insurance? There is a very inexpensive way to protect you and your family get uninsured motorist coverage.
Uninsured Motorist (UM) insurance is inexpensive and covers you, your family and others when struck by another vehicle without insurance or enough insurance. Included within UM coverage is Underinsured Motorist (UIM) coverage. Underinsured Motorist coverage means that if the vehicle that causes an accident does not have enough insurance to compensate you for medical bills, loss of earnings, pain and suffering, etc., then you can collect the balance of your claim from your own insurance company. Most people do not realize how important it is to have this overage. All year long we obtain compensation for our clients far above the responsible party's policy limit by obtaining additional compensation from our client's own UIM policy. Obtaining this additional compensation from your own carrier, in our experience, does not result in any increase in your premium.
We recommend that you buy as much UM coverage as you can afford. Our experience is that $15,000 in UM coverage costs approximately $25 every six months. But for $100,000 in UM coverage, the cost is approximately $50 every six months (depending on your age, car, and insurance company). For this little extra sum, we encourage our clients to carry at least $100,000 worth of UM protection. For anyone who has an umbrella policy, please make sure that your umbrella also has UM coverage.
Here's one example: if you are seriously injured by someone with a $15,000 liability policy and you have $100,000 in UM cover age, we'll first get you the $15,000 from the other driver's insurance company, and then $85,000 under your own UM policy. We do this all year long.
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