QuestionI am a student living with my girlfriend. She owns a car and I do not. When getting insurance for her car, she asked if I needed to be included on the policy and they said no.
Several months ago I got into an accident driving her car that was my fault (I missed a red light and got hit from the side). After the incident, the insurance company (state farm) said they needed to add me to the policy, after which the insurance rate went up and they told us that they would cancel the policy at the end of the term.
I figured that she could get insurance from another company and not include me on the policy as I will not be driving her car for the foreseeable future. Today she attempted to do this with Nationwide and they told her that she needed to provide my drivers information since we are living together and I don't have my own auto insurance, before they would give the policy. As such, when they received this information the policy rate doubled.
It seems to me that since State Farm didn't require my information before the accident, there should be no reason that Nationwide should need my information. We are not married or legally entangled in anyway, we have the same legal status as roommates would. Plus, I'm not going to be driving her car anymore. If she was living with ten uninsured roommates, would Nationwide need the drivers history of all of them too?
Is this just a policy of Nationwide? If she shops around to other companies, will they need my information too?
AnswerHello Cliff,
I am sorry to hear about your accident. Well, I not 100% with what Nationwide does, but the issue is that you are now part of a claim history on her car, meaning that you have shown the propensity to drive her car.
The reason why they can request your information (and to ten uninsured drivers if they are roommates), is because most auto policies define family members as household members (people living with you). So it creates a very interesting scenario where, per most policies, your roommates are family members and your parents/siblings not living with you would not be. Family members are covered, and people not living with you would not be.
The best thing you can do is to find a carrier that will not ask, and the best way to do that is to get quotes from several insurance brokers. I think this is one of the better ones, and after 5 minutes she might be able to get at least couple of insurance companies that might not ask:
http://www.auto-accident-blog.com/go/auto-insurance-quotes.php
Good Luck,
Anne
http://www.quirogalawoffice.com/
