Umbrella liability insurance

[kareid]

This may seem like a strange question, but does anyone have an opinion on umbrella liability insurance?  Is it worth it or a way for insurance companies to scare you into paying them more money?  As I start to have some actual assets, I'm wondering if I should consider it as a way of protecting myself against stupid people suing me, since that seems so popular in the US.  If anyone has a policy, how much coverage did you decide to get and why?

Comments

[goddess32585.livejournal.com]

For half a second I thought you meant, y'know, insuring your umbrella. (It's been really windy recently! This totally makes sense.)

I guess I wonder on what grounds do you think you would be triggering these lawsuits? I have no other opinion, other than 'insurance as a concept is fine, but in practice annoys me so much I'd rather go without, except when work makes health insurance easy.'

[kareid.livejournal.com]

The general reasons I see are stuff like 'somebody slips on the driveway of your house and sues you for a ton of money' or 'your tree falls and crushes somebody else's house' or 'you hit somebody in a car accident'. I don't think I'd be doing anything unusual to cause them, but accidents happen to people, and some of the people they happen to either can't admit that they do, or like to see them as a way to profit. If you have assets like houses, they can think that they're likely to profit off of suing you over the accident. I guess my rule on things is 'insure against things you can't handle if they happen', so I insure my house against fire, but have a high deductible, because I can deal with minor damage fine, but not loss of the entire house.

[gmpe.livejournal.com]

Our insurance agent recommended that we drop the policies on our cars for what we'd pay to someone else if we were in an at fault accident and get an umbrella policy instead. Specifically, I think the recommendation was based on our assets and income and what someone was likely to try to get in a lawsuit. We're considering it, as it may also replace a liability policy that we have through our homeowner's insurance. Really, it's a "what happens if someone sues me for any reason" policy. Instead of having a couple instances of "we'll cover you if someone sues you for this thing" you can just have that. If getting rid of or dropping to the lowest mandatory levels on those covers or mostly covers the umbrella policy, it sounds worth it to me. We're hoping to redo insurance soon, but have had other things distracting, so I can't give you more specific info.

[lerta.livejournal.com]

We do a $500k umbrella policy, I think. And I'm forgetting how much it costs :) We largely do it out of concern for judgements against our future earnings, as we don't have a huge amount of assets yet. I don't think it's imperative to have, but the price was such that I decided it was easier to just not have to think about it.