All too often, when Gropper Law Group gets retained to represent victims of motor vehicle accidents, they find out the hard way that they had insufficient insurance coverage to adequately protect themselves. Thus, you should make sure that you have the correct insurance coverage in place BEFORE the accident! It’s OK to protect your assets, but you also need to protect yourself!!
This post will focus on 3 important insurance coverages: Supplemental Uninsured/Underinsured Motorists Coverage (UM/UIM), Additional Personal Injury Protection (APIP), and Supplemental Spousal Liability.
When purchasing automobile insurance coverage, most people focus exclusively on their Bodily Injury (BI) liability, which pays for injuries that other people suffer as a result of an accident which they (or others using their vehicle with permission and consent) caused.
BI liability limits are usually split limits, which means they provide a certain amount of coverage per person and a maximum total amount per accident. For example, a policy may have a split BI limit of $100,000 per person/$300,000 per accident. If you caused an accident and there were two people in the other car, the policy would pay no more than $100,000 for one person’s injuries and no more than $300,000 for both people’s injuries combined.
However, what happens when YOU are the accident victim? What happens if you are stopped and waiting for a red light and an uninsured or underinsured vehicle behind you smashes into your vehicle?
The minimum legal BI liability limits in New York are only $25,000 per person/$50,000 per accident and if the offending vehicle has either no insurance coverage or minimum limits, it is critical that you have adequate Supplemental Uninsured/Underinsured Motorists Coverage (UM/UIM) in place or you may find yourself limited to $25,000, which is often woefully inadequate to compensate you for the injuries that may sustain.
If you have adequate Supplemental Uninsured/Underinsured Motorists Coverage (UM/UIM) in place, however, then you can look to your own insurance coverage to protect yourself in the event of serious injuries sustained as the result of the negligence of the uninsured – or under insured – driver. While you are not allowed to have UM/UIM limits that are higher than your own BI liability limits, we recommend that the Supplemental Uninsured/Underinsured Motorists Coverage (UM/UIM) coverage be as high as the Bodily Injury liability limits. Note that New York UM/UIM only applies if the accident happens within the State of New York. If you’d like to have UM/UIM apply when you are traveling out of state, you’ll have to add an endorsement (something that changes the standard insurance contract) to your policy for an additional fee.
Personal Injury Protection (PIP) is required coverage in the state of New York. Personal Injury Protection provides certain benefits up to a set amount if you are in an accident, including coverage for medical bills (up to 50,000), increased household expenses ($25/day for 3 years following the accident), 80% of lost wages up to a maximum of $2,000/month for 3 years, and a $2,000 death benefit in addition to the basic $50,000 PIP benefit. For an extra fee, you can also add to the basic PIP coverages and obtain Additional Personal Injury Protection (APIP).
Additional Personal Injury Protection (APIP) raises the PIP benefit limit from $50,000 to $100,000. Guest PIP coverage extends PIP coverage to out-of-state passengers who would not ordinarily be covered. Optional Basic Economic Loss (OBEL) coverage is another additional PIP coverage that adds an additional $25,000 worth of benefits for basic economic loss, which includes lost wages, medical bills, etc.
If you are in an at-fault accident and your spouse is a passenger, he or she is generally excluded from receiving benefits under your Bodily Injury liability coverage. However, if you select Supplemental Spousal Liability, your spouse would be eligible to receive payments from your Bodily Injury benefits if he or she was injured in an accident that you caused. For this coverage to apply, your spouse would have to use up all of your Personal Injury Protection and Medical payments benefits first.
Other insurance coverages commonly found on New York auto policies include Property Damage Liability (PD), Medical Payments, Comprehensive and Collision Coverages, and Accidental Death and Dismemberment Coverage (AD & D).