Are you covered? Know your limits

You're Injured, Now What?

An update to keep you informed on personal injury situations.

The Law Offices of Kennith L. Peterson is your local auto accident expert.  We service Yorba Linda, Placentia, Anaheim, Tustin, Brea, Fullerton, and surrounding areas.  When we meet with clients who have been involved in automobile accidents, one of the first things that we ask our clients is the level of coverage that they have for uninsured / under insured motorists.  A good percentage of the time, our clients do not know their policy limits in this regard.  We usually have to take a look at the insurance policy to confirm what their coverage is.  May times the uninsured / under insured coverage is not at the same level as their liability policy.  Many times it is only a 15/30 policy which means that the most that you can claim for an individual is $15,000.00. 

We encourage our clients to have the uninsured / under insured coverage to be the same as the limits for their liability portion of their policy.  The uninsured / under insured policy is really insurance for monies to be paid directly to the policy holder as opposed to the monies being paid to someone else.  Recent studies estimate that as many as 1 in 4 drivers in California are uninsured.  That does not take into consideration the number of drivers who are under insured.  Under insured means that while a driver has insurance, they do not have adequate insurance to cover the damages that arise when they are involved in an automobile accident.  If you take into consideration the uninsured motorists on the road, as well as the under insured motorists, you are probably talking about the majority of the drivers in California.  That means that it is very important to carry adequate uninsured / under insured automobile insurance.  Our recommendation is to carry a minimum of 100/300 thousand uninsured / under insured policy.  However, if you can afford it, the uninsured / under insured policy should be a 250/500 thousand policy or more.  If you are carrying a 250/500 thousand policy for uninsured / under insured motorists and you are involved in an automobile accident, there will be at least $250,000.00 available in insurance to cover your medical costs, loss of earnings, and personal injury.