Uninsured Motorist Coverage must match your Liability Limits or you are not taking care of Yourself.
By having higher liability limits than uninsured motorist coverage, you are protecting everyone else more than you are protecting yourself and family, or anyone else who happens to be in your vehicle. Why should you protect some random third-party more than your wife or children?
Uninsured motorist and under-insured motorist coverage are one in the same. Uninsured motorist coverage covers you in the event that you are involved in an accident with an uninsured motorist or involved in a hit-and-run automobile accident, with certain limitations. Under-insured motorist is a situation wherein the liability limits of the third-party are less than your uninsured/under-insured motorist limits and you are allowed to recover from your own insurance company the difference between the third-party’s liability limits and your uninsured/under-insured motorist limits.
With what is happening in our country today, having uninsured motorist coverage is compulsory because those who have lost jobs or income are almost certainly going to be cutting corners and one of those corners will inevitably be automobile insurance coverage. Even without the COVID-19 pandemic, only one in eight drivers has no liability insurance. In the state of Florida, almost 27%, or one in four, has no liability insurance. However, it is probably only one in four that have more than minimum limits, which in California is $15,000.00 per person and $30,000.00 per occurrence. This means that the most that will be paid to any person is $15,000.00 and the most for all persons injured is $30,000.00. A trip to the hospital can easily exceed the minimum per person limit, so under-insured motorist coverage becomes imperative. Over the years, I have had many Clients who simply did not understand the fact that there could be an additional recovery pursuant to an under-insured motorist claim and simply believed that their injury claim could only be satisfied to the extent of the other party’s liability limits.
Please feel free to contact my office so that any questions about insurance coverage can be answered.