[FFlank]

Originally Posted by lawgolfer

Great comment Judge. The only person who will protect you and yours is yourself.

My 34 year old partner who was killed by a drunk driver left a non-working wife with no particular job skills, and two young sons. His family received the limits of the drunk's auto liability policy. Next they received the limits of his primary UM/UIM policy less the payment made by the drunk's carrier; the UM/UIM limits of his umbrella policy, the firm's group life insurance policy; Social Security; and, interestingly, Workers Compensation from our firm's WC carrier as he was in the "course and scope" of his employment at the time of the accident, attending a legal seminar in another state.

As for myself, the only life insurance I carried for many years was our group life. I was always healthy. If I had any concern about my health, it was the stress and strains of a litigation practice, particularly arguing with judges who didn't see matters my way. Instead, I spent my insurance dollars on auto insurance with high limits for both liability and UM/UIM, and an umbrella with even higher limits. I reasoned that I was not likely to die of disease or a non-auto accident. Instead, I was more likely to be seriously injured or killed in an auto accident at the hands of an uninsured/underinsured driver given that our practice covered a large part of Central California which had large numbers of migrant farm workers and other poor people with little or no liability insurance. With the passage of years, our son's completion of grad school, and the shifting of the workload to the firm's younger attorneys, I increased the life insurance while maintaining the large UM/UIM limits. With retirement, I dropped the life insurance and severely reduced the UM/UIM limits.

Being in a small town, I walked both sides of the street and represented both claimants and insureds. For the last third of my years in practice, I spent the majority of my time on insurance coverage issues. As with my story of the rich man whose agent sold him a large auto policy with no UM/UIM coverage, I encountered numerous instances of bad acts by an insurance agent. For anyone that has even the slightest concern about the coverage he/she is being sold, my advice is to consult another company's agent or, preferably, an insurance broker who serves as your "agent" and not the insurance company's.

Your years in the business have given you a great perspective, and your post was valuable to the thread. Glad that you are enjoying the fruits of your labor and I hope to be able to join you folks in TV in the near future.