<p>Plaintiffs have no obligation to cooperate with the insurance company of the individual who is at fault. </p>
<p>It is very strange that your friend was not served with the statement of claim in this lawsuit. The suit is against your friend and son as the owner and driver of the car. While it is up to the insurance company to defend the suit, it makes no sense that they were the ones served and not the insured. Generally speaking, what happens is the SOC is served and the insured would turn it over to the insurance company to defend. If your friend has difficulty reaching the lawyer, why isn’t she contacting the adjuster at her insurance company who is handling the file? That would be the normal course of action. There’s really no need for your friend to hire an attorney. The attorney that the insurance company is having defend the suit is representing her.</p>
<p>Our insurance company, USAA, said that as long as the child is a dependent, a suit can still be brought against the parents regardless of how the car is insured. So I didn’t get separate policies and instead increased the umbrella. The kids are still dependents because they get tuition benefits from the university at which I teach and also have to be dependents to stay on the health insurance.</p>
<p>Umbrella polices are relatively inexpensive and almost everyone should have one. In the absence of assets a court can garnish the future wages of a plaintiff. So your medical student son or daughter who is making nothing now but will be making significant money later on should have high liability limits on their auto policy and an Umbrella policy as well.
We have $500,000 of underlying Auto Liability coverage and a $3,000,000 Umbrella. The Cost of the Umbrella is less than $300 a year.
The biggest personal liability exposure that any of us have in when we are behind the wheel of our vehicles. IMO.</p>
<p>According to my independent insurer and our umbrella issuer, as long as you have $300/500K on the auto and meet other minimums on your other policies, you can have an umbrella policy. Our policy is for $2M and costs about $100-200/yr, which is money we consider well spent.</p>
<p>Back when I was a plaintiff’s attorney, we WOULD always find the person with a good umbrella policy tended to have the best attorneys in town in any case in which their insured could possibly end up having to pay anything.</p>
<p>It is much cheaper to get an umbrella policy than having to buy the maximum coverage on each of your policies. </p>
<p>FWIW, the plaintiff (in our state) can find out defendants insurance policy limits once a suit has been brought and they file the paperwork requesting proof of policy limits. This is typically one of the first things that happens once the complaint and answer to a lawsuit are filed, particularly if there is a lot of serious damage involved. If the policy limits are low, often a policy limits demand letter is promptly sent out to the insured to try to resolve the case promptly before significant attorney expenses are run up. </p>
<p>It is always up to the plaintiff as to whether to pursue recovery of assets over and above the policy limits, if an award is received which exceeds the policy. In the five years I practiced at the law firm, I believe we only went after personal assets once because a business was clearly underinsured and our client suffered severe brain injury and needed medical care and other help for the rest of his life. I believe every attorney in our firm had adequate umbrella coverage because we worked with so many people who had suffered severe injuries due to accidents.</p>
<p>We titled the cars to the kids and got them separate policies when they turned 18-19. The policies were through the same company. Our discounts were extended to them and being on their own policy was slightly more expensive than being on ours. I have a $2 mil umbrella.</p>
<p>The bonus effect I didn’t consider—both sons became immediately more responsible and had a different attitude about their vehicles as soon as we did this. They were well aware what happens to rates and other possible future consequences. They were good responsible kids and drivers before and I didn’t anticipate such a change. They weren’t about to let other kids or even each other drive their cars. It was a nice bonus.</p>
<p>I was pleasantly surprised last year when I went out onto my own insurance. They simply transferred all of the discounts that my parents had and put it onto my plan. And I went from a 1998 S10 with liability only to a 2002 Silverado with full coverage and my rates only went from around $240/6 months to $440/6 months. I was pretty happy :)</p>
My umbrella policy requires $250K/$500K liability coverage on the auto insurance policy.</p>
<p>This liability coverage is the single most expensive component of each driver’s policy, and it is not cheap. It is cheaper for the kid to have their own policy with much lower liability coverage because they have no assets to speak of.</p>
<p>We’ve been sued in a slip-and-fall accident. We were served, not the insurance company. When it finally got to trial, 6 years after the fall, the trial took half a day, and it took the jury 14 minutes to decide in our favor. Even though the person actually did fall and get hurt.</p>
<p>The lawyer (appointed and paid for by the insurance company) said they never settle, and win 95% of all the cases. It turns out juries are generally pretty serious about deciding who is truly at fault, and don’t just soak the people with the deep pockets.</p>
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This stuff will all be brought up at the trial if the lawyer is at all competent, and the jury will be very skeptical about the claim.</p>
<p>If the friend is being sued for less than the amount of the umbrella policy she has no financial exposure. It’s aggravating, but nothing to lose sleep over.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your comments. I talked with my friend after this discussion.</p>
<p>As an update, I was wrong about her not having been served. She WAS served, and her son and she were both named. The charges were vague but seemed related to reimbursement for medical expenses. No punitive damages were requested. The box for “over $25,000 in damages” was checked.</p>
<p>At my encouragement (based on your comments - thanks) she called her insurance company and demanded more information. It is “a very weird case” per the company. The other party has changed lawyers twice and has never responded to a single request for a bill, despite repeated (documented) requests on the part of the insurance company for information. </p>
<p>This person is in the entertainment industry, and part of the case seems to be “lost potential wages”, according to what the first attorney told the company.</p>
<p>The other party was scheduled for a deposition recently, and cancelled it. </p>
<p>My friend is calming down as she realizes this is a flaky person who is trying to make up her own rules by bypassing the insurance company and suing her directly. My friend is more than covered for any damages but I’m hoping a judge will be angry that this woman refused to follow the pathways for reimbursement (i.e., insurance company) already in place. </p>
<p>Thank you for the discussion about dependent children having their own policies. Much food for thought.</p>
<p>It was cost prohibitive to have our kids on their own policies. Apparently though, rates go down after kids have been licensed for 3 years, also if your kids are more than 100 miles away at school ask for the “away” discount. We saved 40 per month when dd left for school.</p>