We continue to believe that Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist (UM) coverage is essential to protecting yourself and your family from the potentially catastrophic effects of a car accident. Stacking UM coverage is a fairly inexpensive way of further protecting yourself, and your family.
As we have discussed previously, Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist coverage protects you or a family member if you are injured in an automobile accident with a driver who has no bodily injury liability coverage, or very little coverage. UM coverage “steps into the shoes” of the uninsured driver, and functions just like his bodily injury liability insurance — if the uninsured driver had elected to carry bodily injury coverage.
Under Florida law, whenever you elect to carry Uninsured/Uninsured Motorist coverage, your insurance carrier is obligated to offer you “stacking” UM coverage. Stacking UM coverage allows you to combine the coverage limits of the UM coverage on each of your vehicles, to create essentially a “super policy”.
For example, if you own three vehicles and each vehicle features $100,000/$300,000 in UM coverage, if you are involved in a motor vehicle crash with an uninsured driver, you can “stack” the three UM policies. In such a scenario you would be entitled to $300,000/$900,000 in UM coverage for your accident. Of course, this doesn’t mean that your UM carrier is going to pay you the limits of the coverage — you still have to prove both liability and damages.
It is also important to note that stacking UM coverage does cost more than non-stacking UM coverage. However, the potential financial benefits of having stacking coverage when catastrophe strikes far outweigh the slight increase in price.
When you consider the information discussed in this video, stacking UM coverage is a no-brainer:
