What Is Umbrella Insurance?
Imagine someone gets injured or suffers property damage and you have the liability. Or you are sued due to a connection that you may have with a business or board, even perhaps an HOA position. Your normal homeowners or car insurance often won’t go very far and you could potentially lose everything in a lawsuit.
Umbrella insurance is there to protect you against these potentially large losses. These policies typically provide liability coverage of $1 million or more. And best of all, these policies are relatively cheap compared to the financial coverage that they provide.
Liability issues are everywhere and you never know what could cause someone to present you with a lawsuit. With umbrella insurance, the policy literally puts you under its umbrella so that when you exceed the liability coverage limits of your normal insurance line, you will have that “big umbrella” of protection.
Who need umbrella insurance?
Umbrella Insurance is typically purchased at a low cost to you, but will provide enough coverage to where you shouldn’t have to worry about liability costs in the future.
Under most normal home and/or car insurance policies, your liability coverage only covers bodily injury and property damage to others–with fairly standard limits. Umbrella policies will extend those limits to not only provide additional coverage for bodily injury and property damage, but also to cover things that are not listed under regular liability allowances.
Every policy is different, so what is considered a covered liability issue under one insurance line may not be covered on another insurance line. Umbrella Insurance kicks in when these situations present themselves and/or you exceed the amount of liability coverage for the events that are already allowed under your regular insurance policies.
Additionally, many umbrella insurance policies can provide coverage for legal defense costs as well… and those bills can certainly add up.
You may not think you need an umbrella policy, but consider this: What happens to you and your family’s assets should you be sued for something that occurred at your home and the legal costs of the lawsuit greatly exceed the liability coverage defined by your homeowner’s policy? Who will pick up the tab if you are responsible for a multi-car accident and your liability costs exceed the limits on your car insurance by thousands of dollars?
Although these kinds of things may be few and far between, if you ever do need such a policy you will be very, very happy that you had the foresight to purchase one. And, since the chances are low that the majority of us will ever need it, umbrella insurance is usually quite inexpensive.
In short, planning for a rainy day includes an umbrella insurance policy. Contact Lucas Insurance Services today for more information on umbrella policies, coverage and quotes.