Personal Umbrella Insurance is additional liability insurance, designed to pay out when your existing auto and homeowner’s/renter’s insurance policies are exhausted. For example, you may only have $300,000 in liability coverage on your car insurance. If you are in a car accident and found liable for $1,000,000, you would be on the hook for $700,000 yourself unless you had an adequate umbrella insurance policy.
An umbrella policy can also fill in the gaps by providing coverage for other incidents, like liability for rental properties, or being sued for slander or libel. Imagine working and saving for decades, only to have all of it taken away with one incident. Here are some examples of when an Umbrella Policy works:
Do you drive a car? In a severe car accident, medical costs alone can exceed $100,000 per person easily. Now imagine if there were 2, 4, or even 6 people in the car.
Are you ever a parent chaperone? A high school field trip led to a $700,000 verdict for negligence:
Do you have a dog? Lately there has been an increasing number of dog-related claims. Two real examples that didn’t even involve a bite involved the dog knocking someone over leading to over 1M in medical bills.
More scenarios that Umbrella Policy worked:
- You leave a negative Yelp review about a company and the business sues you for defamation. A recent verdict was for 800K for a mediocre 3-star Yelp review.
- A man was asked to cut down a tree from his own yard. He refused, and later a hurricane blew the tree down and injured someone in the neighboring house.
- Your child gets in a fight at school, and injures another student.
- You have a pool, and a visitor hurts themselves.
- A handyman or contractor hurts themselves on your property.
Have the insurance company lawyers be on your side and covered by the policy.
The premiums are relatively affordable. It cost us about $250 a year for $1 million in coverage, including 2 cars and a house. That’s basically $10 per month and will add to bundled discounts with most of our companies.
It’s often easy to add to your existing policy.
Bottom line. Umbrella insurance gets to the core of the purpose of insurance. You pay money to share the risk with others and protect you and your family from a catastrophic event that could ruin your lives. In other words, you pay the premiums with the hope that you will never have to make a claim on it.
At Insurance Shops we can help with ALL your insurance needs and we get paid by the insurance companies so there is never an extra charge to our customers. We represent over 100 Major Companies. Call us for all your Health, Medicare, Life, Disability, Auto, Home, Business, Annuities, Dental, Employer/Group plans and start saving today.
