One thing that I continue to see over and over in my law practice is injury victims who are very under-insured. Even though Alabama has a mandatory insurance law now the limits are grossly inadequate ($20,000) and many many people on the road still do not have insurance.
Because you cannot control how much insurance coverage someone who crashes into you has I cannot stress how important it is to make sure that you have enough uninsured motorist (UM) coverage to compensate you for your own injuries. 9 out of 10 people driving probably do not comprehend the concept of UM coverage and probably have minimal UM limits. UM is insurance you buy from your own insurance company and it kicks in when the responsible party doesn't have any coverage at all or doesn't have enough insurance coverage to pay for your injuries. Alabama law requires that your insurance company offer UM coverage to you and you have to sign a written UM rejection form if you don't want it. That's how strongly our legislators feel about UM coverage.
When it comes to UM my advice is to buy the maximum coverage limit that your insurance company will sell you because it is very inexpensive to have it but can be very important if you ever need it. You should be able to get at least $100,000/$300,000 coverage if not $250,000/$500,000.
In my practice I have seen dozens if not hundreds of heartbreaking cases where an individual is injured by a party with little or no insurance and gets little or no recovery at all. I recently reviewed a case where a man was killed by a drunk driver but neither party had any insurance at all. If the deceased man had kept his liability insurance intact and added UM coverage things would have been just a little easier to manage for his widow and daughter. More on UM later.
CALL YOUR INSURANCE AGENT TODAY AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE MAXIMUM UM COVERAGE AVAILABLE
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