Types of automobile insurance with Attorney Glen Wieland.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Hey, folks. It's time to introduce my good friend, Attorney Glen Wieland. Hey, Glen. Welcome to the show.

Attorney Glen Wieland: How are you?

Tom: Hello, Glen. How are you doing this morning?

Glen: Tom, how are you this morning?

Tom: I'm doing great. This is Attorney Glen Wieland. Glen, I thought we'd take an opportunity to talk about automobile insurance because a lot of people out there get dazed and confused about it. I thought you might lend us your expertise because I know you do personal injury with automobile accidents.

Glen: Absolutely, Tom. By the way, congratulations. You have the longest running legal radio show in the country-

Tom: Thank you.

Glen: -and that is a big tribute, and I got to congratulate you on that.

Tom: 38 years I've been doing this radio show, Glen. Thank you for that. Appreciate it.

Glen: I know.

Tom: Hey, Glen, so let's start by talking about the different types of coverage. Just give us what it's called and what it's for, and then after we do that, I want to dive in a little bit on a detail on one of those types of coverage. Go ahead, Glen.

Glen: In Florida, you're only required to carry two types of insurance to get your driver's license and be able to drive an automobile. One is called personal injury protection or what we commonly call no-fault insurance. The other is property damage insurance. It's interesting because when you and I first started practicing law, the only thing you had to carry was the PIP or no-fault insurance. Then the banks got involved because they had a lot of collateral running around out there that they wanted to protect it, so the legislature made sure that we all took out property damage insurance.

Those insurances, the PIP and no fault, only pays for medical bills and lost wages for the person that has the policy. In other words, you and your car and anybody in your car, it doesn't do anything for the other driver. If you're involved in an accident, your own insurance, which is why it's called no fault, is going to pay 80% of your medical bills and 60% of your lost wages. You can buy additional coverage to cover medical payments so that you have 100% payment of medical bills so when you go to the hospital or doctor those medical bills are completely paid and you don't have any out-of-pocket expenses, you're not losing any money.

Property damage only pays to fix the car. In Florida, you only have to carry $10,000 worth of no fault or property damage coverage. Tom, it's been that way since you and I started practicing law back in the '80s. Unfortunately, medical bills have gone up a lot, so people probably should carry more than just a basic 10,000. Then you have collision comprehensive--

Tom: Is the property damage for the driver's car or for the other driver's car?

Glen: The no fault is only for the driver's car.

Tom: Got it.

Glen: The property damage is to fix the other driver's car or the telephone pole you hit or the mailbox you run into, that's what that pays for.

Tom: Got it.

Glen: Then you have collision coverage, which means your car gets repaired if you collide with something, and that's where you have your deductibles. The higher the deductible, the lower the premium. The problem is if you have an accident and you've got come out of pocket whatever your deductible is to get your car fixed. If you take your car to a body shop and it gets repaired and you have $1000 deductible, that body shop's not going to let you have that car until you hand them $1000 of your money on top of the insurance money.

Comprehensive coverage covers anything that isn't a collision that happens to your car. A tree limb falls on your car, it gets hail damage, somebody keys your car, that's all under comprehensive coverage and it also has a deductible. Those two have deductibles. Then you have bodily injury protection coverage, which is coverage that if you hit someone and cause them to be harmed, then your insurance will pay to fix their body up to the limits of your insurance.

Tom, the most important insurance anybody in Florida should be able to carry and should have is called uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. That is a major, major thing that people need to have in this state.

Tom: Glen, bodily injury coverage, is that required by a Florida driver?

Glen: No, it is not. For years, the legislature has looked at trying to get rid of no fault and bring in bodily injury coverage because we have a law that says if somebody causes an accident and you're involved in that accident, they have to have insurance to fix your car, but not your body or your child that was in the car or your wife or your mother that was in the car. They don't have to fix any of those human bodies, but they have to fix the metal and the car, but they don't have to fix the humans, and that's a real problem in Florida.

Tom: I think we can make an assumption that there's a lot of drivers out there that number one, might be driving around without any insurance at all, but number two, they're driving around with just the minimum requirements to legally have a driver's license here in the State of Florida.

Glen: Tom, I think the statistics I saw were one out of three cars that are driving on the highway have either no insurance or just the basic minimum. They're not going to fix your body. As you drive down the road, you go one, two, no insurance, one, two, no insurance. The interesting thing is, Tom, after 11 o'clock at night especially on a Friday or Saturday night, that number goes up to more than 50% because those are the people that are out probably partying and drinking and they're saving all the money they can for partying, but they're not paying it for their insurance.

Tom: With that said, that's why it's so important for you to have UM coverage in Florida. Either you might call that underinsured coverage or uninsured coverage. What would be, if you were recommending to people, how much UM coverage should we have on our policies?

Glen: The law requires that if you buy bodily injury insurance, your uninsured motorist coverage has to match that. What I tell people is they have to look at their own individual situation. If they're out of work for a month or two months, how much money do they need to help pay their bills? Remember, the uninsured motorist or underinsured motorist coverage also would help you pay the outstanding medical expenses.

Because today if you go to the emergency room, and in our cases, Tom, we've seen people that went to the emergency room after an accident, and before they left the emergency room their bill was in the $20,000 range. Their PIP was gone and they still had a balance of about $10,000 to $15,000.

Tom: Then how much UM coverage do you think people should have or bodily injury?

Glen: I would say the minimum that someone should carry is $50,000 to $100,000 worth of uninsured voters' coverage. The interesting thing, Tom, is in Florida there's two kinds of uninsured or underinsured motors you can buy. One is called non-stacking and the other is called stacking. The beautiful thing about stacking is if you own two cars and you have a $50,000 policy and you have stacking insurance and you're involved in an accident, you can stack those two coverages on each other. Now instead of $50,000, you have $100,000 worth of uninsured motor coverage.

Tom: Glen, the bottom line is that if you have accumulated some wealth, you own a home, you might own a beach condo, you got some money in the bank, you've got some retirement savings, you've worked hard for all of your money, I think really the more wealth you've accumulated, the more insurance you should have driving your car out there.

Glen: Absolutely, Tom. You're absolutely right. If you own your own business, you better make sure that your business has insurance coverage to cover the loss because they may try to come after you. Business owners need to be careful. I've seen some cases where business owners were getting sued, so they decided they would shut down the corporation, and that's not necessarily a good thing. They would need to talk to you about why they shouldn't shut down that corporation because that corporation may protect them individually from a lawsuit if the accident was part of a business-related accident.

Tom: Glen, the other topic I want to cover is, let's say you're a responsible adult and you've got pretty good coverage. Let's assume you've got $200,000 worth of coverage. You're in a terrible automobile accident. It was unfortunately your fault. Of course, first person I heard is they've hired a personal injury attorney and now your insurance company is supplying you with an attorney to defend you. Then you get the word from your attorney that, hey, you've got $200,000 worth of coverage. It appears that the damages that you caused to the bodily of somebody else might exceed $200,000. What do you do then?

Glen: The first thing you should do is probably contact a lawyer because that letter you're getting from the insurance company lawyer that is to represent you is telling you you need to go get private counsel because you may have losses that go above the policy limits and the insurance company's only going to pay the policy limits unless they're guilty of what's called bad faith, but that's a rare case. You should go contact an attorney to find out, am I collectible? Can this person come after me and my wife

and get our assets, our house, our cars, our retirement funds, our 401(k)s?

Typically, most of those are probably not collectible. We've been doing this for years and it's a rare case we find people are really truly collectible because of the laws in Florida that protect people, but they should contact someone who has the expertise, like somebody in your office, Tom, where you all can tell them, oh, you have a trust, or you have this is protected, or your homeowner's is protected, and those are questions that can maybe make people feel a little more comfortable that if the verdict came in from the jury at a million dollars and you only get $200,000 worth of coverage, can they get any more money from you individually?

Tom: Glen, you gave us some great advice today. We appreciate it very much. Thank you. That's Attorney Glen Wieland. Thanks for coming on the show, Glen. We'll have you back soon.

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