Why Would You Want to Exclude Someone from Your Policy?

There are numerous times when excluding a driver makes sense. (autoblog.com)

Within any family, there’s the potential for dysfunction. And that capacity for  can even extend to your car insurance policy. But while we recommend only excluding bad drivers from an auto policy, there are a number of circumstances were keeping someone off your policy can make perfect sense, and they don’t necessarily require a dysfunctional or negative connotation.

Times When an Exclusion Makes Sense 

The first example of a driver you may wish to exclude from your policy is a spouse that’s a bad driver. And what do we mean by bad driver?

Take for example, a spouse that’s compiled a list of moving violations, has gotten multiple DUIs, or even lost their license. If your spouse has lost their license, they cannot legally drive, so there’s not a good reason to keep them active on your policy. Keeping them on it will only lead to much higher car insurance premiums.

Another prime candidate for exclusion may be a child of driving age, and there are a number of times you might wish to consider it.

Let’s say you’re divorced, and the child’s other parent provides the car your teen drives and covers the teen driver on their policy. In this case, it’d save one parent money since they wouldn’t have to add the teen to their policy.

Another case would be when a teenager with a drivers license is in school, either in state or out of state and doesn’t drive or have a car with them. And we know that it sounds like a grand plan to save some money on your premiums.

Since the child won’t be driving, and since they don’t have a car, why include them on the policy? Well, there are some reasons why you might want to keep a teen away at school on the policy.

If your child will be making frequent weekend and holiday visits, you’ll need them to be protected by your auto policy, unless of course, you’ll never let them drive. With things like errands to run, social lives and even a quick jaunt to the local convenience store, you may find it’s very beneficial to still have your child protected by insurance so they can drive any of the family’s cars.

And since we’re talking about college-aged children, we can envision scenarios such as your student being asked to act as a designated driver for others, or simply asking to borrow one of their friend’s cars. By keeping your student on your auto policy, you’ll be able to ensure they have adequate insurance protection, regardless of how the car they’re driving is insured.

One final thing might tip the scales in the direction of keeping a teen away at college on your auto policy. Don’t forget, car insurance can even provide protections for those who are walking or riding a bike, not to mention when your child is a passenger in cars being driven by others.

Keeping your child on your auto policy means the benefits afforded by the policy, such as covering medical expenses after being struck as a pedestrian, while riding a bike, or as a passenger in someone else’s car, will remain in effect.

How Do You Exclude Someone?

If you’re going to exclude a spouse, the first step is to ensure than none of the automobiles cover by the policy are in their name. If the spouse is listed as the primary or co-owner on a vehicle, you’ll have no choice but to accept the massive increases, since an owner cannot be excluded from coverage, even if they don’t have a drivers license.

You’ll need to have your spouse remove their ownership interest and sign the vehicles over to you. But just having them removed from titles isn’t enough.

Then you’ll need to contact the insurer to have the spouse or child excluded from being covered by the policy.  The process for excluding someone from your insurance policy will vary a bit from company to company.

Usually you just need to inform your insurance agent that you want to exclude a person from your policy. They’ll ask you to give that person’s information and then sign a document to that effect. That exclusion will usually stay in place until you tell the insurance company to rescind it.

What You Need to Know About Exclusions

It’s important to remember that when you decide to exclude someone from your car insurance policy, you are saying that none of your coverage will be extended to any vehicle that person uses.

You only want to exclude someone that will not, under any circumstances, be driving any vehicles you own. An exclusion means that your car insurance company will not pay out for any damages as a result of that person’s driving. Paying more for insurance is bad, but not having coverage for a vehicle that is involved in an accident could be much worse.

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