Lawton & Cates Blog

Wisconsin Law With Respect to Automobile Insurance Changed Dramatically in the Last Month

Wisconsin now has mandatory insurance, has increased the minimum limits, requires Umbrella policies to offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and allows consumers access to coverage they purchased. This article will look at some of the major changes and explain how they affect you.

Mandatory Insurance. Wisconsin was one of the last states not to require drivers to have insurance. That has changed, and now all licensed drivers are required to have at least $50,000 in liability insurance starting next year.

Increased Limits. Wisconsin has increased the minimum limits of insurance from $25,000 to $50,000.  This is great news for consumers in Wisconsin. The rising cost of healthcare makes it easy to incur medical expenses in excess of $25,000.  The new law recognizes this economic reality and addresses it.

Underinsured Motorist Coverage. (UIM) There are several changes to this type of insurance that benefit you.  The first is that it is now a required coverage, meaning that it will be part of every policy and won’t have to be purchased separately.  The second change is that the insurance company can no longer tell you that you have $100,000 in underinsured coverage when they would never have to pay it.  The new definition of underinsured motorist means that if you have damages in excess of the available liability coverage, your UIM policy will pay them up to the limits of the policy.

Umbrella Policy Insurance companies used to sell umbrella policies, (high limit  policies that kick in after your regular policy is exhausted) and not tell you they did not included coverage for uninsured or underinsured motorists.  Consumers would buy the policies and think they had $1 million in coverage in case they got hurt by an uninsured motorists only to find out too late that that was not the case.  The new law requires insurance companies to offer uninsured motorist and underinsured motorist policies as part of Umbrella coverage.

Stacking Many of you own more than one car, and pay separate premiums for each car you own.  You pay a separate liability and uninsured motorist premium for each car.  Under the old law, insurance companies stopped you from using more than one of your policies to pay for an accident.  Let’s say for example that you caused an accident and as a result there were $200,000 in damages to the other person.  If you owned two cars that each had $100,000 in liability coverage, your insurance company would not let  you use both policies to pay the damages.  You would have to pay half the damages out of your pocket.  The new law does not allow the insurance company to do this.

Hit and Run The law has now changed to allow recovery if you are forced off the road by a reckless driver who never stops.  The old law required there to be physical contact between the cars before you could recover.  Thus, if you were driving down the road and someone was coming straight at you, you could not recover your damages for driving into the ditch to avoid a head-on crash unless they caught the person who ran you off the road.  The new law provides that if there is an independent 3^rd party to provide evidence that the unidentified motor vehicle ran you off the road you do not have to have physical contact between the vehicles.