We are living in a very litigious society. These days, people are bringing lawsuits for just about anything. All of your policies, home, auto and watercraft have specific limits of liability. What happens if an accident occurs for which you do not have sufficient liability insurance?Umbrella insurance used to be closely associated with wealthier people. These days it is very important for everyone to have an umbrella policy. Wikipedia defines an umbrella policy as, ” insuring more than one property as opposed to only one…Typically, an umbrella policy is pure liability coverage over and above the coverage afforded by the regular policy, and is sold in increments of one million dollars. The term umbrella is used because it covers claims of liability from all policies underneath it.” For example, let’s say you have an auto policy with $250,000 in liability limits and a homeowner’s policy with liability limits of $500,000. Those limits are called “the retained limits”. If you purchased a $1 million umbrella policy, then the umbrella policy would cover the difference between the auto or homeowners policy limit and $1 million.
Historically, umbrella policies have been used by people who have a large amount of assets. However, these days, more and more ordinary people are purchasing umbrella policies as an extra level of protection. Umbrella policies are secondary to your primary auto and homeowner’s policies. What this means is that your umbrella coverage only kicks in when your auto or homeowner’s policy’s limits have been exhausted.
Umbrella policies are generally inexpensive in comparison to the coverage you receive.
Here is some information you will need to take out an Umbrella Policy:
1. Personal Info (name, address, DOB, sex, marital status, years licensed, state licensed, and occupations of all household drivers).
2. Five year history of violations and accidents for all household drivers.
3. Complete list of all property owned.
4. Current Insurance policy information.
5. Limits of liability you are requesting.
