One rule we have had with all our kids is that while we provide the vehicle, the gas, maintenance etc., they must pay their portion of the insurance to drive.
My DD will be heading off to a school where she will not drive. Have any of you had experience with waiving insurance while their kids are away at school?
You need to check with the insurance company how kids away at college without a car are handled if you want to keep them on the household policy (particularly if they come home during breaks and drive one of the insured vehicles).
In some cases, there may be discounts for students with higher grades.
My insurance company won’t let you take them off the policy completely but do have an “away at school” discount.
Same as suzy’s.
I don’t know of any auto insurance that’d waive off your child’s for being away at school. The premium will typically depend on how far your child’s school is from home. I was able to get a decent deal for my older son who’s now a junior in college, but I decided to have my younger son, who’s going away to college this fall after a gap year, on driver’s permit status and will maintain that status for the rest of his college years unless, unbeknownst to me, there’s a limit to how long he can be on “permit” status.
There are several ways to handle this:
My students all eventually had cars at college. The one year my oldest did not, we used option #2. Just don’t assume your student will never, ever drive another car (friends get too drunk to drive or get sick and can’t drive to the doctor). For a few hundred dollars I don’t want a civil judgment following my kids around for the next 20+ years.
My insurance company is very good in this regard. They allow me to add my daughter to the policy when she comes home for the summer and allow me to remove her when she goes back to school in the fall. They say that for the other small breaks that she gets, as long as it is less than a month, she is covered.
Our DS had the away at school
discount as a freshman and 1st semester sophomore. He now has a car at school. The difference in premium did not make up for the expense of getting him back and forth. He is responsible for 1/2 the annual insurance and his on campus parking and gas used while there. We still pay for a tank of gas when he drives back and forth but that is better than 2 tanks and the time away from the office or a round trip airline ticket + airport shuttle.
Ditto the “away at school” status on the insurance policy.
We actually changed insurance companies to get the “away at school” deduction.
My insurance company din’t take my kid off or give a discount. We paid the same as if she was still at home. As far as they have their home address, they kept her on the policy.They finally took her off when she had her own apt.
If you end up canceling the insurance while the student is away, wouldn’t an umbrella policy cover liability if s/he drove someone else’s car in a moment of bad judgment?
We got the “away at school” reduction in rates. It was good as long as the kid was at least 50 miles away. When D went on a semester abroad, her coverage went to $0 for that time since she wasn’t coming home at all. This was for USAA.
Re #11
Umbrella liability policies have large deductibles that underlying auto and other applicable policies fit into. They would also have to name the insured persons.
Thanks for all the replies - I was getting ready to go insurance shopping anyway, so now I know what to ask. I didn’t even know if “away at school” was an option.
The ability to remove or not, or get a discount or not, is like as not reflected in the overall cost anyway so do the math.
Away at school option worked great for us. They could not drive more than 30 days in a row (covered holidays but not summers, except the summer abroad). For us, we had a 300 mile away limit. We decided DS was 310 miles away but it was close. He did come home a bit more than DD at 3000 miles away, but NOT by many days!
As noted above, this varies tremendously by carrier and potentially by state.
We changed carriers to get the discount to not include them on the policy if they are away at college. We were told that for breaks, if they are back for more than 30 days, we had to add them back on. Otherwise, don’t pay.
Other carriers had no breaks, and required them to be included if their license is from the same residence.
It can be really expensive to add a young, inexperienced driver to a policy. Look around.
I’ve inquired with my insurance company and was told a 25% discount, which doesn’t seem significant when the percent driving to not driving will be more like 10%-90%. What was a bigger concern, was that future rates for the child are impacted by the continuity of insurance coverage. So they said if we didn’t cover them at school, when they graduated and needed their own insurance, it would be more expensive.
It could also be a ploy to sell insurance, not sure.
@SnowflakeDogMom Be sure to ask/compare the details of the “away at school” insurance options – I know for our policy the kids had to be at a college that was a certain distance from home.