Renters insurance is a no-brainer when you need affordable protection for your personal possessions in the housing unit you don’t own. Your stuff is covered against loss or damage by fire, internal flooding, burglary, or countless other events. In fact, many property owners won’t even rent you space until you show you have renters insurance.
There’s truly a high cost in skipping renters insurance in Georgia even if you can. And that’s before even considering the advantage of adding renters liability insurance in GA to your plan.
Why Liability Coverage Is Essential for Renters in Georgia
Things can go wrong in your personal spaces in any number of ways. Some of those ways can impact others, and that’s where your real trouble begins.
Liability protection covers your finances if you must pay medical costs or take on legal bills due to actions that get blamed on you. For example, you forget a burner is on, and it causes a kitchen fire in your space, which in turn, causes smoke damage to expensive electronics in another apartment unit. If you get sued for the damages, your liability benefits help cover the cost of hiring a lawyer and the fees, fines, and legal damages if you’re found to be at fault.
Or a visitor trips and is injured on your steps because the kids’ toys were in the way. Your renters insurance liability coverage can pay for your friend’s medical care. And if they turn out to be not such a great friend and take you to court, your liability can help pay for that, too.
See how valuable this benefit is? The first time you need this tenant insurance coverage, you’ll appreciate the good sense you had to add it to your policy.
What Liability Coverage Does (and Doesn’t) Protect Against
The key word might be accidents. That’s how your renters liability coverage protects your finances. When you or a member of your family accidentally injures others or damages their property, you’re covered.
If your child accidentally throws a baseball through a neighbor’s window, and the neighbor wants compensation for the damages, file a claim. But if your child and his friends deliberately broke the window, you’re not covered.
If you have guests over and one falls because they’ve had a little too much to drink, file a claim. But if that guest gets into a drunken brawl with you, your plan won’t cover their medical expenses.
Another consideration to keep in mind is that renters insurance liability coverage covers the injuries and property damage of others due to your fault — but it won’t cover your own damages.
Take the kitchen fire example used earlier. While the smoke that damages the contents of another apartment unit is covered through your liability benefits, that same benefit won’t pay for the damage to your own unit. (The property owner’s insurance should cover that, and the personal property protection benefits on your renters insurance plan should cover your own fire-damaged possessions.)
The Claims Process Explained
Be sure to tuck away in a safe place (perhaps on your phone) the name and contact information of your renters insurance agent. That’s a good first step if you need to file a claim — or even suspect that the need might come.
Any time you accidentally or inadvertently cause physical damage to the property of others or visitors in your rented home are injured, it might cost you in terms of legal costs or the simple expectation that you’ll pay for the injuries or damages you incurred. That’s when you need to contact your agent.
It can also be useful if you can photograph or videotape the event or the damages that resulted. This is especially important if you don’t accept blame for the event and would like to fight it. Explain this to your agent, too.
Special Conditions for Pet Owners
Suppose it’s not your kids with baseballs and bats causing trouble to others. Maybe it’s Fido. If your dog gets loose and bites a runner several blocks away, you’re probably covered if they sue you for the injury.
That is, you’re covered if your insurer knows about your dog and has it included in your policy. However, there are certain breeds of dogs that many insurers won’t cover because of their heightened aggressiveness.
Canine breeds that often aren’t covered include pit bulls, Rottweilers, German shepherds, and even some smaller and notoriously excitable breeds. And if your dog has a history of biting, it likely won’t be covered regardless of breed.
The best thing you can do is explain your dog and its breed to your agent and see if they can include it in your policy.
Is This Tenant Insurance Extra Coverage Worth It?
When you think of what it might cost to have to hire a lawyer and then lose a court case to someone who’s injured by your pet or experiences the total loss of their possessions to a fire that started in your unit — yep, liability is definitely worth it. The costs of the protection are low in Georgia — often just a few extra dollars a month.
Think of it in terms of your own peace of mind and the protection of your finances for a very low cost.