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Hi, I’m John Gardner, President of JSG Insurance Services.

One of the things I frequently see are low liability limits on people’s homeowner, renter, and condo policies. I think this is because people don’t think about the possible things that can happen.

Most people think of liability for their auto insurance, having a big accident and are worried about that, but don’t think about things that can happen at their home. Let me give you some ideas of things that might occur.

Think about the fact if you have a pool and the accidents that can happen around a pool, especially if you have teenage kids or young kids. There’s certainly an exposure there that you need to consider. Or if you have play equipment like a swing or something like that, or a dog. Sometimes dogs get teased by kids and then they reach out and bite anything like that can happen.

It’s important to have proper liability insurance to protect yourself against that. The fact is, things don’t have to happen on your property. Let’s say you’re playing golf and you hit a wayward golf shot that takes out somebody’s windshield. Those are the sorts of things that can be handled by your home liability insurance.

One thing that people don’t think about, especially in today’s age of social media, are personal injury losses. For example, you might make some sort of comments about your neighbor on social media, and it gets back to them and they take offense to it and actually sue you for it. That’s what is called personal injury. Your homeowner liability policy can cover you inthese circumstances.

Again, it’s important, even if you don’t think you did anything wrong, to still have the coverage to make sure that you have the defense to defend yourself against such claims.

How much could you be sued for? My question to you would be how much would you sue for if your child was injured by somebody else’s dog or if they were injured at somebody else’s pool? Chances are, you’d probably try to sue for a significant amount of money and this is why it’s important to protect yourself in the same circumstance.

If you don’t have enough insurance for one of these types of claims then it’s not a good situation for you. For example, in California, you can have your wages garnished. What that means is that in order to settle the lawsuit in California, the person who was injured can actually take a percentage of your income - up to 30% in fact to settle that claim. So that would be over years that you’d have to pay in order to settle that claim.

They can also come after other assets. For example, if you own income property, they can come after that, or if you have money saved for retirement, or saving for a boat or any number of different things, all those assets are exposed. What’s important is that you carry enough insurance in order to protect your future income and to protect your assets because the more that you have, the more likely someone is going to come after you and the more likely they’re going tobe successful in a large claim. It’s important to have enough to protect your assets and future income.

In order to make sure you have the right coverage, we’d like to offer you a free report. Simply click on the link below where you’ll be taken to a short questionnaire with only 5 questions.

Complete that questionnaire and we will send you a free report to help you determine if you have the proper coverage.

JSG Insurance Services
27433 Tourney Rd, #280
Santa Clarita, CA 91355
661-388-5288