Welcome to QuatriniRafferty’s Legal Tip Tuesday. My name is Joyce Novotny-Prettiman and I’m so happy that you’ve joined us. I’d like to talk to you today in a little bit of detail about one type of coverage on your auto insurance and that’s Unin(Uninsured)-Underinsured Motorist Coverage. If you want to hit the pause button and grab your policy, I’ll take you through some of the details of that type of coverage. You can make sure you’re adequately covered.

So, we’re going to talk about three things today. First, is that you actually have Unin-Underinsured Coverage in place. The second thing is that we want to look at the limits of coverage you selected. And third, we want to see if you have stacking in place. That’s absolutely important, you want to make sure that you have stacked on and Unin-Underinsured Motorist Coverage.

So, going back to the coverage itself, under Pennsylvania law you do not have to carry Un or Underinsured Motorist coverage but, you absolutely want to have it in place. Otherwise you’re very vulnerable to being hurt in a car accident and if the other driver hasn’t paid their insurance bill, they may have no insurance in place at all. If you don’t have Uninsured Coverage in place, there’ll be no insurance coverage to help you with your losses including medical bills, potential wage loss, and pain and suffering.

The other thing is you want to absolutely make sure that you have Underinsured coverage in place. Under Pennsylvania law, the liability limits that people are required to carry are only fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000) in coverage. That means that someone can be absolutely legal with regard to the coverage they have in place but, you may need to use Underinsured coverage because, quite honestly, fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000) of coverage does not go very far if you are injured in an auto accident.

Second, we wanna take a look on your policy to make sure that you’ve purchased Un and Underinsured Coverage in the same amounts that you’ve purchased liability coverage. You don’t want to have less coverage that protects you and your family than you’ve purchased to cover other people if you might be at fault in a car accident. So, we recommend that you have a hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) of liability coverage. You want to have that much Un and Underinsured Coverage as well.

Third, we want to make sure that you have selected to stack your Un and Underinsured Coverage. That means that in the event that you would have a family member or yourself significantly injured in a car accident, you may be able to have the protection not only of the Underinsured Coverage that’s in effect on your vehicle but, you may be able to stack the coverages of the other vehicles in your household so that you have additional underinsured motorist coverage. It’s really important, you want to make sure you have stacking.

So just to recap, make sure that you have coverage in place for Un and Underinsured motorist matters. Number two, you want to make sure that you have the limits of those Un and Underinsured coverages equal to your liability coverage. Three, you want to check and make sure that your policy of auto insurance has stacking. You also want to check with other members of your household to make sure their policies have stacking as well. People many times don’t realize that if there are family members that live in your household, that can be adult children and that sometimes can be parents who’ve come to live in one household together. All of the family members can have the protection of those very important coverages.

So, hopefully you know a little more about your Auto Insurance coverage. Thanks so much for joining us, take care!