Protecting Your Family in an Auto Accident

When you buy insurance for your automobile, you want to protect those in your car as much as a known person in another vehicle if someone is seriously injured.  Michigan no-fault insurance companies are doing what they can to reduce coverage for your loved ones, even though you are paying for full insurance protection.  Some insurance companies are employing a step-down auto insurance clause, which is a provision that applies when one family member pursues a compensation claim against another family member arising out an automobile crash.

The purpose of the step-down clause is to reduce the liability coverage to the state-required minimum if a family member is at fault for a crash and another family member is injured.  For example: you and your spouse are traveling in your vehicle and you lose control of your vehicle by negligence.  You have liability insurance in the amount of $300,000.  Under the step-down clause, the liability coverage is reduced to the state-minimum of $20,000 for your spouse.

Many families don’t find out about the step-down clause in their policy until it is too late.  Michigan no-fault insurance companies that have step-down clauses should be avoided.   Some of the companies using such clauses include Progressive, Farm Bureau, Geico and Grange, just to name a few.

Talk to your agent about your policy.  These step-down provisions are hard to find in the policy, and you should make specific inquiry to your agent to see if your policy has such a provision.  If it does, adjust your policy to ensure adequate protection is provided to protect your loved ones.

Robert L. Blamer is a partner is our Livonia office where he concentrates his practice on plaintiff’s personal injury and litigation.  He assists clients with many types of negligence actions, workers’ compensation claims, and social security disability claims.  He has handled, resolved and taken to trial many cases with tremendous success not only in Michigan but throughout the country.  His trial experience includes automobile negligence, complex professional negligence, products liability and complicated plane crash matters.  Mr. Blamer may be reached at (734) 261-2400 or rblamer@cmda-law.com.