Divorce and Division

By Guest Blogger – Linda Fisher – Insurance Agent/Owner Extraordinaire

It happens. Relationships sometimes simply don’t work out, and you find yourself moving out of a home and dividing up assets. The insurance in these situations can be complicated for everyone including your insurance agent.

We get the calls often. We are getting a divorce and he/she has moved out, so delete them.

It’s not that simple. We will never knowingly leave a client without coverage or remove them without their permission.

In these situations, we will take the client who has reached out to us and move them to a new policy with their assets that they legally own. If they are taking one vehicle and both names are still on that vehicle, we will then list the spouse or ex-spouse as an additional insured (using their new address), and loss payee until their name is off the title. That way, they would still be protected if an accident occurred and they were sued, or if the vehicle was damaged. Until that ‘legal insurable interest’ in that vehicle no longer exists, we will continue to protect them.

If a home continues to be in both names until the divorce is final, we will keep the insurance in the name of the owner who continues to reside in the home and will then again, add the spouse who moved, as an additional insured and loss payable so they would be entitled to liability as well as any physical damage claim checks.

We have had situations where one spouse doesn’t know where the other is temporarily living. These are difficult for an insurance agency to work with as our only option if we don’t have separate email addresses and phone numbers, is to send the notices of the insurance bills and renewals to the only mailing address we have on file, and if that is an address that you moved away from, how would you know if your auto insurance cancelled because it wasn’t paid? There are court cases where clients have been driving around with no insurance and weren’t made aware of it. Our agency makes sure to do everything possible so that doesn’t happen to our clients!

To make sure that you are always protected, we would highly recommend that during ANY separation (not just divorce), that you are in touch with your insurance agent.

I discussed ‘Named Insured’ in another blog but be advised that if you move out of the address we show on file for you, you will have serious coverage gaps especially in your auto insurance policy, once you are no longer ‘related by blood, marriage or adoption AND in the same household’!

As always, we welcome your contacting us if we can be of assistance with your personal, life, or business insurance needs.