Uninsured and Underinsured MotoristClaims Attorney in Cincinnati

Hi this is Justin Lawrence from lawren and Associates and today we’re going to talk about automobile insurance policy limits and what they mean. The insurance policy limits on an automobile policy can take several forms but when there’s an automobile accident that results in an injury what you’re worried about is the liability policy limits for the at fault driver. The liability policy limits are normally expressed as a a number followed by a slash and then another number. Minimum limits in Kentucky are $25,000 and so the number you’ll see on the at fault driver’s policy is 25,000/ 50,000 what this means is that $25,000 is payable through the policy to an individual hurt in the accident and $50,000 is payable in the aggregate so if two people get hurt in the accident and they’re each owed $25,000 to the insurance policy then the policy will pay each of them $25,000 because it’s not paying out any more than $50,000. On the other hand if three people were hurt in the accident and each of them is owed $25,000 through the policy because of their injuries the policy still will only pay a limit of $50,000 out and the money has to be divided among the three injured people it’s important to realize that an insurance company never has to pay more than those policy limits regardless of how badly the injured person person is actually hurt often people will want to go after the at fault driver no matter what else happens and if they’re hurt very badly and they get offered only the policy limits they may feel offended however there are several reasons that they may want to think about taking the insurance policy limits rather than chasing after the ATA driver directly first since an insurance company never has to pay more than their policy polic limits they will never settle for more than their policy limits. That means that if you want to sue the at fault driver directly you’ll have to take the case all the way through to trial. Sometimes it’s important to take a case through to trial but sometimes you wind up costing yourself more in expenses than you otherwise should so you need to take a look at what the at fault driver can afford to pay over and above the policy limits unless the at fault driver is very wealthy there’s a good chance that the at fault driver is not going to be able to pay you enough uh to satisfy whatever judgment you’ve gotten over and above the policy limits in addition because it can often cost as much as $5,000 even to take the simplest of cases to trial and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a case to trial. it’s possible that the expenses you pay out of pocket TOA take the case to trial are not going to be recoverable other than through the insurance policy that may have already offered up its policy limits prior to going to try if you do get a judgment against an at fault driver there are ways that you can recover the Judgment against the at fault driver but it’s not always easy to do so first you could choose to garnish the at fault driver’s wages if you do that only 25% of each paycheck under state law can be paid toward the garnishment. So let’s use some numbers as an example let’s say the atfal driver had $25,000 in insurance coverage and you got a judgment from the court for $100,000 for your injuries well the insurance company will pay the $25,000 out but you still have $75,000 that you need to recover if the at fault driver makes $825 an hour even working 40 hours a week it would take you years and years and even decades to recover the amount of money that you would need to recover to get all of your $100,000 judgment. You can also choose to file a judgment lean against property that’s owned by the at fault driver or garnish a bank account but unfortunately you can’t always recover even when you do so if the at fault driver owns real estate for example and you put a judgment lean against the real estate your judgment lean is junior to the mortgage that’s already on the real estate if the property is sold and it’s not sold for enough to pay off the mortgage then you don’t recover anything on your judgment lean further you have to worry about whether or not the at fault driver can file bankruptcy on the debt at some point in the future. An at fault driver is allowed to file bankruptcy and discharge a debt related to an automobile accident so long as the at fault driver was not drunk at the time the accident occurred. So even if you choose to chase the at fault driver beyond the amount of their insurance policy limits and even if you get a judgment there’s still a very real chance that you’ll have spent money for that judgment that you’re not going to be able to recover not to mention the fact that you’ll be taking time out of your life to go get that judgment that you might better spend on your own recovery. if you have any other questions about how insurance policy limits work or whether it’s a good idea to sue an at-fault driver beyond the limits of their insurance policy check out our website at www.lawrencelaws.com or call one of our attorneys for a free consultation.