What Does Renters Insurance Cover?
What is renters insurance? What does renters insurance cover? Renters insurance covers liability, personal property, loss of use, and medical payments to others. What do these mean to you? Luckily, you’ve come to the right place for a short lesson on what renters insurance covers.
Many people have renters insurance – not nearly enough people, but 30% of renters qualifies as “many,” we suppose. That’s right. Roughly 70% of your neighbors have no liability coverage. That, of course, brings us to the question of why liability coverage is important.
You’re doing your Christmas shopping at the mall, and you stop off for a soda. You’re distracted by the people around you and drop your soda. Before you can move to clean it up, someone else’s kid comes tearing past with his parent chasing them and slips in the soda. She falls and breaks her ankle. That three year old isn’t likely to sue you for medical expenses, but the parents certainly are. If they take the child to the emergency room, that broken ankle could cost fifty grand until all is said and done. That’s an expensive soda, and that’s something liability insurance would have covered.
You’re cooking a romantic dinner for your significant other. Distracted by the oven timer, you leave the candles you were in the process of lighting and run back to the kitchen. In so doing, you knock the candle off the table and onto your couch. Your couch quickly becomes a flaming inferno. Your neighbor goes to the hospital with smoke inhalation. Who pays for that? You do!
Renters insurance covers liability. In both the above scenarios and many more, having renters insurance will enable you to make the injured party whole again without having to dig into your pockets. A basic renters insurance policy has $100,000 of liability coverage, but you can get more than that if need be.
What happens if you don’t have renters insurance? The liability is 100% on you, and the courts could take the money you’ve worked hard to save. Even if you only partially contributed to the negligence that led to someone being harmed or injured, you’re responsible for that part. If you have a roommate and he is 80% at fault for what happened, you may still have to respond to a lawsuit because you shared the lease. Do you have $20,000 lying around? Most people don’t.
Renters insurance protects you when you cause real or perceived bodily injury or property damage to someone else. It can keep you from having a six figure judgement follow you forever. Renters insurance also often makes it more practical for the injured party to take a settlement if one is offered by your carrier. That is a far better result than continuing through a full blown lawsuit.
Another important coverage in a renters insurance policy is coverage for defense. A renters insurance policy can provide coverage for the cost of your lawyers if someone sues you. Depending on policy language, this money may not even count against the policy limit. That can be the difference between having competent representation in a liability case and having nothing. Remember, you’re not entitled to free counsel in a civil action. You’re on your own if someone sues you for a negligent act and you don’t have renters insurance!
Renters insurance can save you time, energy, and money by taking care of liability from life’s little accidents for you. At ten or fifteen dollars a month, it just doesn’t make sense to be without it. Effective Coverage, The Insurance Experts For Renters, can review your needs and make sure you have necessary coverage. Because our products are designed with the needs of renters in mind, you know you’re getting just what you need and not an inflated policy at an inflated price.