Should You Tell Your Insurance Company about your New Driver ?

If you hang around families with kids getting their driver's licenses, this question always seems to come up. Of course, you may be hearing different answers depending on who you speak to. The bottom line is that the safest thing to do is to advise your insurance company to make sure they will cover the new driver if an accident occurs. Yes, you may hear people tell you that they never told their insurance company and never had to pay the rate increase. Did they take a risk? Yes. Do you want to ? That is up to you. If you don't tell your insurance company and add your new driver to your policy, your rates won't go up. As long as they don't get into an accident, you likely won't have a problem. However, if they do get into an accident, you may find out that your insurance company won't cover you for the accident. Then you may need to start worrying. It seems some insurance companies will cover you anyway, and some won't. Some may just back charge you for what you should have paid, but others will leave you totally unprotected. If they deny coverage they may not provide you with lawyers to defend a lawsuit, and they won't pay out to settle a claim or pay out on a jury verdict or judgment. That would be your worst case scenario? Do you want to risk having a judgment on your house?

Here is an article that I found that discusses this very issue to help you decide what you want to do, www.foxbusiness.com/features/2011/05/18/dont-hide-teen-driver-insurance-....

As for me, I plan on playing it safe and adding my son to my policy. If you have any questions you can call me at 631-495-9435, or send me a message through my website at www.NorthShoreInjuryLawyer.com.

I hope that all of our kids keep it safe out there.

Mark T. Freeley, Esq.