I guess I’d start with talking to your insurance agent and asking them pros & cons of keeping kids in your policy and if it’s even an option. Sons folks get a slight discount when kids are off at distant location (like college over xxx miles from “home.”)
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Once D graduated college and chose to live in another state, we gifted her the car she was using & she got her own insurance. S stayed nearby once he moved out, and we kept him on our insurance since the car was in H’s name. When S moved more than an hour away, we talked to our insurance agent. We were told that he should be on his own policy & we shouldn’t leave the car in H’s name (maybe we should have done that previously, but we didn’t ask). We gifted him the car & he got his own policy.
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Timely thread for me as I called my insurance agent to see how much it will cost if I gift the 2009 car that my 21 year old son drives in college to him. I know that he has let a few of his friends borrow the car occasionally and while I have met the kids and they seem like outstanding young men, I do worry about liability if there were a wreck. Has anyone else gone through a similar exercise?
As far as I know my kids were always only drivers of the vehicles we gifted them. I’d be concerned if they allowed anyone else to drive and there was an accident. Kids sometimes don’t exercise ideal judgment.
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agreed - my son was told - he was never allowed to lend his car. And my daughter is told she is never allowed to borrow a car.
It’s a situation - both sides - I’d never want to be involved with. It might not even be an accident - what if you borrowed a car and the engine blew, the windshield chipped, or it had a flat tire?
Best (in my opinion) to avoid the scenario entirely.
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I have a key to my college son’s car. I told him if I ever found out he let someone else drive it I would fly down and drive it home without him knowing, until it was gone.
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We always told the kids not to let anyone drive their (our) cars, but sometimes if they were taking a long trip somewhere, I believe they did have someone else do a shift. Hard to know which is worse. Of course the best choice in the ideal world would be to stop and stay somewhere if they had a long drive and S was tired, but sometimes they make a different choice. Also, younger s did follow the rule of “don’t let anyone borrow the car”, so he often, being a nice guy and one with a car, got stuck being a chauffeur or the one to do the shopping, etc. The roommates did occasionally chip in for gas. But one was very financially strapped so DS didn’t typically ask.
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It’s a Full Self Driving thread 
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Maybe we should steer it back on course? 
Before it goes flat.
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Son was on our insurance until he bought his own car (21). Then, it was all on him. He kept the car in self-storage while he was away at school.
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“Until when” for us is the past few months once I was told by the insurance company that since our 3 - 1@25 and working, 2@23 and in grad school - were living and had drivers licenses in other states they needed their own insurance, even though the titles to the cars they drove were in our names. I mistakenly thought it was ok since they didn’t own the cars. In order for them to get their own insurance we had to transfer the titles to them. I hadn’t really planned on gifting them the cars but just went ahead with it.
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That means your insurance company won’t allow for alternative garaging.
And this is true - each company is different - and that’s why OP needs to consult with their broker or company’s they are considering.
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What company was that? Did you consider changing insurers?
Horace Mann insurance. We are going to change insurers for DH and I 's cars and house, for a number of reasons, but are still proceeding with transferring the titles. I decided I want to be done with the responsibility for those cars and it was time for them to be responsible. I will still provide advice if asked! For all 3, in 3 different states, Progressive ended up being the least expensive to get on their own.
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We have State Farm and they don’t care where the kids and cars are located, so long as we own the cars (having said that, insurance in CA is probably more expensive than other states, so I doubt they are losing out).
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We’ve got 2 kids on our insurance policy with another too young to drive. Oldest is 24 and is working and studying in a city without a car. I’m keeping her on our policy for the foreseeable future even though she told me she didn’t need to be on our policy any longer. The reason: it saves us $$$!
Last year, I called our insurance company to inquire about dropping her and was surprised to learn that our premiums would actually go UP if we did! The agent said something about our risk profile being higher with the only other youthful driver being our 21 yr old son. Daughter has been on our policy for 7 years with a clean driving record, no accidents and now no car – so apparently it costs us less to keep her on. SMH
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I am surprised that your insurance doesn’t care where the cars are located @Twoin18. It may depend on where they are but the rates are likely different for a car located in a city vs a suburan home as an example.
Very dependent on the company - some allow away garaging - but what my guy says is, you likely won’t find a new policy allowing.
What I’ve learned is - there’s a zillion insurance companies - and they all have different rules, risk strategies, etc.
Someone above mentioned Horace Mann - I never heard of them. I had a company called Donegal for years until I didn’t - hadn’t heard of them.
There are regionals, nationals, subsidiaries and more.
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It seems to have all sorts of weird quirks (State Farm), though I wonder how much of that is due to the agent doing odd things with the quotes. I asked if we should take our older son off the policy (he’s living in DC without a car) and they said it wouldn’t make any difference to the price (so he’s still on it, that way he’s covered by the umbrella policy if he comes home and has an accident in the car). The price is apparently based just on where we live and the car is classed as away temporarily, so long as its still owned by us and registered in CA (even though in practice its almost never here, since it would involve a 2000 mile drive to bring it back).
But not as odd as with relatives in the UK: adding me to my mother’s policy (even though I live in another country and am rarely there, let alone driving her car) actually brought the price of the policy down. I guess they reckon that anything you can do to reduce the amount an 80 year old is driving themselves is a good idea.
I mentioned. They are a company that, at least originally, insured people who were educators. They still offer discounts for educators (although that doesn’t necessarily make their policies cheaper than other companies, as we’ve found) and in some states they can only write policies for educators.
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