Table of Contents
What Is Liability Coverage?
Liability coverage pays for property damage and or medical injuries that were caused in an accident in which you were at fault.
What Does Liability Coverage Cover?
Liability coverage is going to cover two main things: property damage and medical injuries. When we talk about property damage, we’re talking about things like other people’s vehicles, other people’s homes, running into buildings running into light poles, things to that nature.
When we talk about medical injuries, we’re talking about hospital bills, pain and suffering, lost wages and anything that is a direct result of the medical injuries from the accident that you caused.
What Does Liability Cover?
What does liability not cover on your insurance policy? It does not cover you the insured, the one who owns the policy, for medical injuries or for property damage.
In other words, you can’t go out wreck your own car and then get paid by your own insurance company from liability coverage for your medical injuries. This coverage is for other parties.
Do I Need Liability Coverage?
Do you need to have it? Are you required to have it? Yes. Not only do you need it, but you are required to have it.
Every state requires you to carry at least a minimum level of coverage for liability.
How Much Liability Coverage Do You Need?
At Heritage, we recommend at least coverage of 100,000 per person. 300,000 per accident with property damage coverage of 100,000.
That’s the minimum. If you really want to get good coverage, we would recommend one step above that, which is 250,000 per person. 500,000 per accident and then 100,000 for property damage and then add a million dollar umbrella on top of that. We’ll talk about umbrella coverage in another video.
Now as we talk about how much coverage you need, it’s important to understand what those numbers mean. Usually they’re referred to as 100/300 or 250/500. What that means is if you’re in an accident you cause other property damage and you cause other people medical injuries and let’s say you have 100 /300.
That means your policy will pay for those other people that you injured. $100,000 per person up to 300,000 in total for that one specific accident and then the back number on that, which is 100,000. Again that is specific to property damage. So if you damage one vehicle or multiple vehicles, your policy will pay up to $100,000 to fix that property damage.
How Much Does Liability Coverage Cost?
As most things with insurance, that depends based on your specific situation, your age, how many tickets and accidents you have, the vehicle that you drive where you drive it, how often you drive it. There are multiple factors that can influence the price that you are going to pay for liability coverage on your auto insurance policy.
As always, it’s best to consult with an independent broker. They can look for the best price and also the best coverage and get you into a policy that fits your specific needs.