Umbrella insurance protects against life’s major liabilities.
What’s your opinion about fireworks? Do you stay indoors to avoid the annual display during River Falls Days, or are you the type who fills your car trunk with enough bottle rockets and firecrackers to share with the whole family? Most of us fall in-between those extremes, and we chalk up our adolescent children’s seasonal fireworks displays as a normal rite of passage.
But what if your kid is the one who lights the match that causes the brush fire that damages four homes in the neighborhood, including the guy next door who operates his auto body shop out of his garage? You don’t need to be a math wizard to calculate that the liability coverage in your homeowners insurance won’t be enough to protect you against that risk.
Since this isn’t a River Falls parenting blog, we won’t comment on how you might handle your kid in this scenario. We’ll stick to the topic we know best. Specifically, let’s talk umbrella insurance, which by design can protect you from unforeseen "rites of passage" like these.
Umbrella insurance supplements your homeowners and auto coverage in the event that your existing coverage is not enough to protect you. It starts to pay after the limits on other policies have been exhausted or when the other policies won’t cover a claim at all. Knowing that, it makes sense that most insurance companies will only offer umbrella insurance to you if you also purchased your homeowners and car insurance policies from them.
If you own property or have investments and other assets that are worth more than the liability limits of your home or car insurance, you may want to consider an umbrella policy. It covers events that may not be covered under those policies, such as a fireworks show gone very wrong. And it can pay for damages that may exceed the dollar limits on those policies, for example the auto body shop owner’s lawsuit for his lost income.
Umbrella insurance is not expensive.
Usually for dollars per month, you can add a million dollars of protection. Owning it shows you’re aware of the potential risks in everyday life, and you are taking steps to protect yourself.
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Here are some ways umbrella insurance can protect you:
- If you hire a nanny, farm hand or other worker, and they are injured in a car accident while running errands for you, umbrella insurance will cover their medical and other costs.
- When you travel to a foreign country, such as China, Mexico or anywhere in Europe, umbrella insurance will cover you.
- If you rent a boat or jet ski on vacation and are at fault in an accident, your umbrella insurance may be necessary if you are sued.
- Umbrella insurance protects against more situations than your homeowners insurance can, including libel, slander and invasion of privacy. Also, if someone makes accusations of intentional emotional humiliation (think extreme bullying).
Stop in our River Falls office or give us a call to see if umbrella insurance is right for you. We will provide a no-obligation quote, and since we work with many insurance companies, we’re bound to find the protection you want at the right price.