Accidents involving drivers with little or no insurance happen more often than many people expect. UM/UIM coverage is one way to protect yourself if the person who caused the wreck has no coverage, and a judgment against an uninsured driver is another option in Texas. Here are answers to common questions on both.
What if the other driver doesn’t have insurance in Texas? Well, that’s no good. It’s important that we all have at least liability insurance because sometimes people mess up, and when you do, you need to be able to take care of those mistakes and take care of the people that were hurt.
Now, let’s say you get hurt by somebody who not only is a bad driver, but they make bad choices and don’t have insurance coverage. A couple things you can still do. One, anticipate this. There’s a significant percentage of people out there driving without liability coverage.
So, you can buy a policy that has underinsured or uninsured motorists, which means you get hurt by somebody, they don’t have coverage or they don’t have a lot. You’re still being taken care of by your own insurance company.
There are other avenues, too, as far as you can still go after that driver. They messed up. They didn’t get coverage. You can still go after them for a judgment that they have to pay personally. These can be difficult. It’s hard to prosecute these.
Getting them to pay off on that judgment is the difficult part. In Texas, there’s a lot of property and assets that are immune from suit. It’s very difficult to seize them. Now, that’s different with companies.
If there’s a company, a corporation out there that messes up and for some bizarre reason, they don’t have coverage, you can go after those assets.
UM is uninsured motorists, and UIM is underinsured motorists. This is what you buy to have in place to protect you when the person who messes up doesn’t have insurance. And it happens a lot.
Here’s the thing. When you buy this insurance to take care of you, if you’re going to have it, use it. You bought it because somebody else doesn’t have insurance, so this is when you use it. Don’t feel bad about going after your own insurance company.
They didn’t feel bad about taking your money when you weren’t using that particular policy, and they’re not going to just give you that money back. So, buy the coverage, use the coverage, and when you go to court, you’re going up against your insurance company. And that’s a pretty good defendant to have on the other side.
We handle personal injury cases on a contingency fee basis, which means you don’t pay anything until we recover a favorable settlement or verdict on your behalf. Our fee is a percentage of your award, which means you never have to pay us out of pocket. Learning about your legal rights means nothing to lose and potentially much to gain.
We provide flexible hours at all of our locations, and we can come to you if you can’t come to us.
Call us today at 833.438.2423 or schedule a consultation with our attorneys to get on the path to full recovery.
