Personal liability – What is it and what does it do for me? Well, personal liability insurance most likely is attached to your home, condo, or renter’s policy if you carry personal liability.
It covers you on and off premises at your home. It will protect you in case a lawsuit or a claim is brought against you where you are responsible for the injuries to other people. And that is what your liability is really set up to do. It is to protect you in case you get sued, in case somebody else gets injured and brings a claim or a suit against you.
On and off premises, I mentioned. On premises, one of the most common ones, is like, say, a slip and fall. If someone falls on an icy sidewalk or driveway; if someone slips down the stairs at the home and gets injured, that is a very common claim. Dog bites are another very common liability claim. If somebody comes to your home and either a child gets bit or an adult gets bit and brings a lawsuit against you, your personal liability coverage is going to protect you against that.
Off premises – It doesn’t necessarily have to be on the premises where your home is. It can be off premises. Let’s say you are out golfing and you hit somebody with a golf ball and they sue you for negligence. Well, your liability coverage would protect you against something like that as well. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be at your home. It can be off premises.
The big question is how much liability coverage should I carry? I recommend a lot. The reason is you don’t know what you are going to get sued for. If you take an item in your home and you decide not to insure it and it gets lost to a fire or a theft, well you have a set dollar amount that you can lose. Liability is not that way.
With liability you never know what you are going to get sued for. So, we encourage our clients to carry a lot of liability coverage. Typically a homeowner’s policy will come with $100,000 or $300,000, and you can usually increase that up to $500,000.
It doesn’t cost much to do this, so we always recommend carrying the maximum you can under your homeowner’s policy, whether it be $500,000, or some companies offer a million. Definitely carry high limits of liability. You just don’t know what you are going to get sued for.
You can also add what is known as an umbrella policy to increase that limit even higher if you need additional liability coverage.
Liability is very important. Make sure you have it and make sure you have enough of it.
I am Ron Philleo with Philleo Agency Insurance and thanks for watching videoinsuranceagency.com.
