How Can an Umbrella Policy Help a Motorcyclist?

The Motorcycle Legal Minute™ was created by Jason Waechter, THE Motorcycle Lawyer, to explain Michigan’s motorcycle law in a short and easy to understand way.

An umbrella policy is extra liability coverage that can be applied to your car, your home, RV, watercraft, snowmobile, off-road vehicle and motorcycle. You still must have an underlying bodily injury policy on each one of those things you own - the house, motorcycle or whatever you own.

Bodily injury and umbrella policies protect you if you did something unreasonable and caused injury to someone. An example may help: if you are on your motorcycle and hit a pedestrian, seriously injuring them, they could sue you. Your motorcycle’s bodily injury policy would cover you up to your covered bodily injury amount, say $250,000. Your umbrella policy would then kick in and pay from there.  

Umbrella policies are fairly cheap. I recommend at least $1 million worth of coverage. Umbrella policies usually have a requirement that you have at least $250,000 of underlying insurance and it does not kick in until that amount is paid. So, if you only had $100,000 on your motorcycle (underlying insurance policy), you would have to pay $150,000 out-of- pocket to meet the $250,000 requirement before the umbrella policy would pay. This is called a gap. Make sure there is no gap if you are purchasing an umbrella policy.

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