Michigan’s No Fault Auto Insurance Is A Little Different
Michigan auto insurance is a lot different from insurance elsewhere in the United States. Required by law in Michigan, no fault insurance has three basic parts. These are personal injury protection, property protection insurance and residual liability insurance (bodily injury and property damage coverage). If you want to register a car in Michigan, auto insurance has to be purchased, and you have to prove that you have it. Like most other places in the US, driving a car without insurance is against the law.
Michigan no fault insurance policies reimburse drivers for medical costs and lost income for up to three years. Lost income reimbursement is currently around four and a half thousand dollars, and applies when an insured driver is killed as well as injured. In the case of a death, the money is paid to the family of the insured person.
If someone is in an accident and his or her injury prevents basic family services from being provided, such as housekeeping, up to twenty dollars per day to hire others to do this for them is also available. You can choose to synchronize your coverage to any existing health or disability policy if you’d like to reduce your premium, as long as it’s not a Medicare or Medicaid policy (these cannot be synchronized). That makes the synchronized policy the primary payer, and the your Michigan auto insurance is responsible for covering what’s left.
Users of Michigan no fault insurance who damage personal property like buildings and fences can have their insurance company pay up to a million dollars for that damage, as well as damage which has been done to correctly parked cars.
Michigan’s no fault law also protects people with Michigan auto insurance from lawsuits, except under a few special situations. For instance, if you caused an accident and someone else was killed or seriously injured, you were involved in an accident with a car that’s not registered in Michigan, or you were involved in an accident in a different state, a suit might happen.
You could also be sued for up to five hundred dollars worth of damage to another vehicle if you were more than fifty percent at fault in causing the accident. However, when you’re sued or otherwise legally responsible for damages, you’ll receive payment up to your coverage limits from your Michigan no fault auto insurance.
There’s a minimum requirement of twenty thousand dollars worth of coverage for property damage and bodily injury coverage to handle situations where a person is injured or killed in an accident. For accidents where several people are injured or killed, up to forty thousand dollars of coverage is required. To cover property damage that happens outside of Michigan, you’ll need to have up to ten thousand dollars of Michigan auto insurance coverage. Just remember that if the court awards more than this, you’ll be responsible for the excess you need to pay.
Michigan no fault insurance doesn’t cover everything, either. For instance, you don’t have to have insurance available to cover fixing your own car in an accident or when flood damage, theft, vandalism, or other types of non accident damage occur, or for covering uninsured motorist damage. However, this kind of coverage is available as part of Michigan auto insurance, even if not required by law.