What is Personal
Umbrella Insurance?
A personal umbrella insurance is basically additional liability insurance. While homeowners insurance can cover the costs for the damages to your property and auto insurance for the damages to your car and bodily injuries, a personal umbrella insurance can help you protect from lawsuits or other claims. It also acts as a cover over your homeowner and auto insurance policy.
Say for example, when you are involved in an auto accident and if the damages are severe and your regular auto insurance policy won’t meet the costs, then that is where your umbrella insurance policy can come into play. If the other person involved in an accident is a highly paid professional or a government official or even a lawyer and sues you for the damages. Then your auto insurance policy can cover you to some extent and only a personal umbrella insurance can give you complete coverage.
Basically an umbrella insurance provides coverage in two ways:
- Provides you an extra cover over all your insurance policies including your homeowners, vehicle, boat insurance etc. The coverage comes into play when you exhaust the limits other insurance policies.
- Provides you coverage on aspects that is not covered under other policies like false implications or other incidents that you may never expect. When your dog hurts your neighbors or rips apart the prized possession of your neighbor or when you child causes some damage to school or neighbors properties and so on.
Who needs Personal
Umbrella Insurance?
When it comes to personal umbrella insurance, it is basically needed if you want yourself protected against excess liability claims. You never know how the next day will turn out to be and it is always better to be prepared for the worst.
Let’s say for example, you get into an accident and the damages come to around $30,000 and even if you are lucky enough to have an auto insurance policy cover the damage, that won’t stop the other party from suing for the medical bills and loss of earnings due to the injury. But since your insurance policy is exhausted just to pay her medical bills, you may be lucky if you are protected under a personal umbrella insurance policy.
Generally you may need a personal umbrella insurance policy if:
- Own a house
- Have a lot of assets and savings
- If you think you may be filed for liability claims when you travel out of the country
- If you are worried that if your dogs and/or kids may land you in trouble with your neighbors by damaging their assets
- If you already engaged in activities that may pose certain risks and may fear getting sued by others
- You are a landlord of a property
- Involved in coaching kids
- Involved in jobs related to large money transaction businesses
- Working on a non-profit organization
- Working on posting reviews and articles about major businesses
- In the field of journalism and fear of getting sued