5 Kinds Of People Who Need An Umbrella Insurance Policy

So you've probably heard of the umbrella policy, but you may not know exactly what it is and whether or not you need one. The answer might surprise you. So the personal liability umbrella policy, aka the umbrella policy simply, is an extra layer of protection that goes over and above all of your personal insurance policies that you carry for anything in the personal world. Your homeowners, your personal auto, rental property that you hold in your personal name, toys, etc. It's an extra layer of protection on top of the other policies. Now the real question is, why should you care and do you need one? Do you need an umbrella policy? In this video, we're going to very quickly talk about the five categories of people that need an umbrella policy. And if you're not any one of those five, then you can probably skip the umbrella for now and be just fine. So the first category of people that absolutely need to have an umbrella policy is simply the people that have a pool in your backyard. If you have a pool in your backyard, you have what's called an attractive nuisance. And lawyers absolutely love this stuff. They love suing people with pools in their backyard because it's sympathetic and you're guaranteed to get a from the insurance company. If someone dies in your backyard, how much do you think that lawsuit is going to be for? It's probably a lot more than the policy that you have on your homeowners policy for liability for accidents and injuries that happen on the premises. So if you have a pool in your backyard, you need an umbrella policy. The second category of person is anyone who has a teenage driver in the household. Unfortunately, we all know teenage drivers love to get into car accidents. And when they do, they tend to be more severe accidents than normal. So let's pause for just a second and say a prayer for anyone watching this video that has one or more youthful drivers in the house. Because yeah, let's be honest, it's a little rough, right? But if you have a youthful driver, you are category number two of person that absolutely needs to have an umbrella policy. The third one, third category of person who needs an umbrella policy, do you own investment real estate in your personal name? Now, whether or not you should have any investment real estate in your personal name instead of a real estate LLC or holding company, that's a conversation for another video and another day. If you hold investment property in your personal name, you absolutely need to have an umbrella policy because otherwise stupid things that your tenants do could come back to haunt you and drag you into their lawsuit. Fourth category is simply this. If you own a business, if you do anything in the public space, if you hold elected office, if there's anything that you do where you might find yourself in a personal accusation sort of setting for libel, slander, defamation of character, advertising injury, so-and-so says that you said something mean about them on Facebook and they want to sue you. All of those sorts of accusations, believe it or not, are covered by a proper umbrella policy because the personal advertising injury is expansive on the umbrella policy. It's not just bodily injury and property damage. It also includes things where you said something you shouldn't have or at least were accused of saying something you shouldn't have. So, the fifth and final category is that you have a lot of money. Do you have a lot of assets? Do you have a lot of stuff? Because anything other than qualified credit protected money like a 401k or a Roth IRA or your homestead, your primary residence, and your primary means of transportation, if you don't have it protected in some way, then it is eligible for attachment and a judgment against you. Talk to your attorney about more information about that. I'm not an attorney yet. That might change at some point in the future. That's another story. But if you have a lot of stuff, a lot of things that are at risk, then please, for the love of God, get yourself an umbrella policy and be better protected for anything that might endanger your stuff. So, there you go, folks. Those are the five categories of why you should have an umbrella policy. If you're none of those five categories, then go ahead and skip it for now. You're welcome. That's it for this video, boys and girls. Thanks so much for watching, and please remember, life is risky. Risk well.