Buying Tips:

Personal Auto Insurance

Our Advice? Don’t buy low liability limits. Michigan minimum liability limits are $20,000 per person/ $40,000 per event / $10,000 property damage (shown as 20/40/10). These limits are inadequate to accommodate any real medical liabilities that would face you over our verbal no-fault threshold. Consider no less than $250/$500/$250, or $500,000 Combined Single Limits.

• Why such high limits – I thought that MI is a no fault state? The answer is because we have a “verbal threshold” for No Fault, which means that these are no dollar amount for losses. The verbiage in the law that allows lawsuits is “Does the impairment affect the plaintiff’s ability to lead his normal life” This is oversimplified, see the 8/2/04 article in MI Lawyers Weekly for more information on this subject.

• Make sure that your Uninsured and Underinsured Motorists coverage (UM/UIM) limits match your liability coverage. After all, the liability coverage represents your responsibility for injuries to others. UM/UIM is someone else’s responsibility to you, but since they don’t have coverage, or not enough coverage, you basically are buying your own coverage. Why give someone else the benefits of higher limits, when you don’t have them!

• Another case for higher property damage limits. In Michigan, regardless of the limits as shown above, you automatically carry, by MI law, a $1 Million property damage limit. Why not get the minimum limit of $10,000, then. That might work if you never left the state of MI in your vehicle. Your auto policy changes to meet local state laws that apply. If you drive to Ohio for example, they do not have “No Fault” laws. Keep those liability limits up!

• Broad Form Collision simply means that if you are less than 50% at fault for a collision loss, you don’t pay the deductible. Without the Broad Form option, you still pay your deductible.