What You Should Know about Liability Insurance for Houston Texas.
What you will discover about umbrella insurance in this report:
- How easy and common it is to be the target of a lawsuit?
- How to get massive protection for just pennies a day?
- What you should know about whats not covered with Umbrella Insurance?
- Tips on how to save money!
- What are you really getting with your libility insurance policy?
If insurance is for a rainy day, Texas umbrella insurance is for a storm! A day when someone hits you with a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars.
Think it can't happen to you? Do you know how lawsuit-crazy this country is? You can't pick up a newspaper these days without reading about somebody suing somebody else for what? You read the article and say, that' crazy. There is no way somebody should be able to sue for that.
Well, guess what? The courts are clogged with these crazy lawsuits, and sometimes the person bringing the lawsuit wins. Do you really need coverage for these crazy lawsuits?
Remember that a lot of lawsuits are not crazy at all. Actually, most get settled. Often, the person being sued winds up paying something to the person who brought the lawsuit. That doesn't even include the fees the defendant in the lawsuit has to pay to his or her attorney.
Umbrella insurance provides massive protection for pennies a day.
Because it is designed for those really rare rainy days, umbrella insurance is cheap and versatile. Liability insurance provides additional coverage not only for your auto policy, but also your homeowners or renters policy.
Further, umbrella insurance covers things auto, homeowners and renters policies don't cover.
Such as? In the insurance world, there's something called personal injury. This is not damage to someone's body, but to his or her career or reputation.
- Example: Imagine you say in public that a certain person is a lying, no-good so-and-so. Maybe you really believe this to be true, but the person is very offended. He or she can sue you.
Umbrella insurance also covers personal injuries such as invasion of privacy, wrongful entry, wrongful eviction, false arrest, and malicious prosecution. Some umbrella policies will provide coverage if you are sued because of your service on the board of a civic, charitable or religious organization.
However umbrella insurance doesn't cover everything.
- For example, if you are sued and the court assesses punitive damages against you, those damages wont be paid by your Texas liability insurance policy.
- What are punitive damages?
- They are damages awarded to someone in order to punish the person being sued. Punitive damages are awarded for outrageous, reckless conduct.
You can usually buy umbrella policies with $1 million limits for $250 or less per year. If you need more than $1 million limits, you can usually buy each extra $1 million of coverage.
For only a few hundred dollars, you can increase your per-person liability limits 10 times, 20 times, even 30 times and it applies to both your auto and homeowners insurance policies.
How does umbrella coverage work?
Liability insurance actually sits on top of your auto and homeowners or renters liability coverage. Say you have a per-person liability limit of $100,000 on your auto policy. Say also that you cause an accident in which a driver or passenger in the other car is ultimately awarded $250,000.
Your auto policy will pay the first $100,000, and your umbrella will kick in the remainder. Well, almost the remainder.
Like auto policies, umbrellas have deductibles. Usually anywhere from $250 to $2,500. But a deductible of even $2,500 is a small price to pay if you are hit with a $250,000 judgment.
Because umbrellas are over the top of the auto, homeowners or renters liability limits, some insurers offering umbrella policies require you to have your auto and homeowners with these companies as well.
However thats not really a problem because most insurers are positively tickled to be able to provide someones auto, homeowners or renters, and umbrella insurance.
In addition, most insurers offering umbrella coverage require you to have liability limits of a certain amount on your auto and homeowners policies. Typically, this minimum is $100,000 for homeowners and $100,000 per-person for auto.
Yes, you could chose to increase your auto and homeowners liability limits to, say, $1 million for each policy. But not every auto and homeowners insurer offers such high limits.
Purchasing an umbrella policy is usually a cheaper option than increasing the limits on your auto and homeowners insurance. Plus, you get the additional personal injury coverage that is not available in your auto and homeowners or renters policies.
