Montana Car Insurance

Montana car insurance requirements may not provide you with enough coverage for a car accident in the Big Sky state.

The Big Sky state of Montana opted to not be different when it came to car insurance requirements.

Montana likes to be different, so while doing the research for this post I was half expecting to find that there was no required Montana car insurance. While Montana car insurance is not required to register your vehicle like it is in most other states, it is still required to drive. The only problem is that part of the required liability coverage for Montana car insurance is a little low.

Required Property Damage Liability for Montana Car Insurance

Like a lot of states, Montana requires a decent amount of medical liability coverage and not a whole lot of liability coverage for property damage. The property damage liability requirements only sit at $10,000. We have talked about how ineffective this minimum limit is before, but it never hurts to go over it again.

If you only have $10,000 in liability coverage for damage that you do to another person’s property, your insurance company is not going to pay any more than that. Figuring that the average new car costs at least $20,000, you can see where you would come up short if you were to total a new car that belonged to someone else. Your Montana car insurance company would pay up to what they are responsible for (the $10,000) and that would fulfill their end of what they are responsible for.

Anything beyond the $10,000 worth of liability property damage coverage that you purchase for your Montana car insurnace would be coming out of your pocket. As an example, that $20,000 car that was totaled by you will have $10,000 paid by your insurance company for the damages. The remaining $10,000 is left to you to pay.

Because you probably don’t have $10,000 just lying around, the other parties insurance company will help pay the remainder. Don’t get too excited though! They will be coming after you to get their money back in what is called subrogation.

Required Bodily Injury Liability for Montana Car Insurance

Montana has set their required bodily injury requirements at $25,000 of coverage for a single person’s injury related costs. The total that can be paid for the entire accident has to be no lower than $50,000. These coverages aren’t bad for basic injuries.

But, keep in mind that this doesn’t just cover for medical bills. There is also the settlement that your Montana car insurance company may make with the other person for pain and suffering. Also there are other expenses, such as time missed from work that the other party may want to be compensated for. If you don’t have enough coverage on yoru Montana car insurance policy, you could find yourself being taken to court.

Any judgment that is made against you in court that exceeds the limit of your Montana car insurance policy is your responsibility. If the judgment is large enough, you could end up making payments on it for the rest of your life.

Contact a Montana Car Insurance Agent

The amount of Montana car insurance needed varies from one person to the next and a liability amount for one person may not be enough or may be too much for the next person. To make sure that you are covered by enough insurance, contact a Montana car insurance agent; they will be able to go over with you in detail the coverages that would be best for your personal situation.