What’s Different About Michigan’s No Fault Auto Insurance?
Michigan auto insurance has a number of differences from car insurance in other locations in the US. No fault insurance is required by law in Michigan, and comes in three major parts: property protection insurance, personal injury insurance, and residual liability, covering property damage and bodily injury. If you need to register your car in this state, you must buy auto insurance in advance and prove you have coverage. Driving without insurance is against the law.
Policies under Michigan’s no fault insurance provide for reimbursement of medical costs plus lost income from your injury for up to three years. The amount you can receive for this was around four and a half thousand dollars as of 2007. This amount also applies when someone who has died in an accident and who has Michigan auto insurance. His or her family will receive up to that amount every month for three years to make up for the lost income.
When someone is hurt in an accident and can’t provide basic family services like housework or maintenance, another twenty dollars per day is available for hiring others to perform these duties. Michigan no fault insurance coverage can be synchronized to an existing disability or health policy to cut premium costs, as long as that policy doesn’t come from Medicaid or Medicare. The synchronized policy then becomes the primary payer, and your auto insurance covers only what remains.
If you have Michigan no fault insurance, your policy will pay up to a million dollars in damage done by your car to other people’s property, such as fences, buildings, lamp posts and other objects. If you do damage to someone else’s vehicle, and that car is properly parked, this policy will also pay for that damage.
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.
In this state, you’re required to carry a certain amount of coverage. That includes at least twenty thousand dollars worth of coverage for bodily injury and property damage for every person hurt or killed in an accident. Forty thousand dollars worth of coverage is required in case of accidents where multiple people are injured or killed. Another ten thousand dollars worth of coverage is required for property damage outside of Michigan, and you’re responsible for the excess paid in all cases where the award exceeds your coverage.
There are some things that aren’t covered by Michigan no fault insurance, too. For instance, there’s no requirement for insurance to cover repairs to your car, for comprehensive coverage (which handles flood, animal, fire, vandalism and theft damages) or for uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. You have to buy coverage for this to have it dealt with as part of your Michigan auto insurance.
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