What is an underinsured motorist case?
In all states, there are min­i­mum insur­ance lim­its in order to dri­ve a car. In Illi­nois, the min­i­mum insur­ance lim­its are $25,000 per per­son. If you are in an acci­dent with a dri­ver who car­ries the state min­i­mum insur­ance lim­its, it means that no mat­ter how seri­ous your injuries, no mat­ter how high your med­ical bills or lost wages, the most the at fault driver's insur­ance com­pa­ny has to pay is $25,000. Giv­en the cost of med­ical care, many of our clients incur sub­stan­tial bills which quick­ly approach the state min­i­mum lim­its.
If the oth­er dri­ver does not have enough insur­ance to cov­er your injuries, your insur­ance will cov­er the excess. Of course, you must have under­in­sured motorist lim­its greater than the per­son who caused the acci­dent. If you also have the state min­i­mum insur­ance, you will not have an under­in­sured motorist case. Your lim­its must be greater than the at fault dri­ver. We always advise our clients to have high­er insur­ance lim­its than are required by law. Usu­al­ly, your under­in­sured motorist lim­its will be the same as your Lia­bil­i­ty Lim­its lia­bil­i­ty lim­its and your unin­sured motorist lim­its.
There are many legal and tech­ni­cal require­ments to present an under­in­sured motorist case. If you have a poten­tial under­in­sured motorist case, it like­ly means your injuries are more seri­ous than a sim­ple mus­cle strain or mus­cle sprain. It is advis­able to have an expe­ri­enced per­son­al injury lawyer han­dle your case. There are too many pit­falls which can hurt your case.
Won't my insurance company treat me fairly in an uninsured motorist case?
Even your insur­ance com­pa­ny will not offer the full val­ue of your claim to you Lets face it. You have paid your insur­ance pre­mi­um, some­times for decades, and you have nev­er had a claim. You are in an acci­dent which was not your fault, and now you have an unin­sured motorist claim.
Many peo­ple believe the insur­ance com­pa­ny will treat them fair­ly because it is "their" insur­ance com­pa­ny. It's not like mak­ing a lia­bil­i­ty claim against anoth­er insur­ance com­pa­ny, is it? You may be sur­prised to learn that insur­ance com­pa­nies han­dle unin­sured motorist claims the same way they han­dle lia­bil­i­ty claims.
The fact that you are one of their insureds makes no dif­fer­ence. The job of an insur­ance com­pa­ny is make mon­ey, not pay claims. An insur­ance com­pa­ny will try to keep the amount of mon­ey they pay on any claim as low as pos­si­ble.
You still need a lawyer to rep­re­sent your inter­ests in an unin­sured motorist claim. Sim­ply because you are deal­ing with "your" insur­ance com­pa­ny in an unin­sured motorist claim, does not mean your insur­ance com­pa­ny will open their check­book and pay you fair com­pen­sa­tion for your injuries. Insur­ance com­pa­nies look for any way what­so­ev­er to keep the amount of mon­ey paid on a claim low. This is why you still need a lawyer to pro­tect your inter­ests in an unin­sured motorist case, even against your own insur­ance com­pa­ny.