I currently live at home with my parents in NY and am under their insurance as a driver for the cars we have. I just bought a car last weekend and need proof of insurance to have it registered. In my research, I've been getting conflicting points on whether or not I can add the car under my parents' insurance and am feeling pretty confused right now.
The title has my name on it. Would my parents be able to add the car to their plan and we co-register it? My mother is persistent since the rate would be lower – besides the title in my name, how is this different than our current set-up where I am insured to drive the cars we own? I would be the primary driver but the rest of my family is free to use it. Would I need to add them to the title to proceed like this?
I keep finding responses stating that if the car was in an accident, the insurer could deny coverage, parents liable for damages, basically paying for no coverage, etc. Please ELI5 what my options here are!
Currently a driver under parents’ insurance, insuring a new car?
byu/tree_embracer inInsurance
Posted by tree_embracer
2 Comments
You’ll need your own insurance policy.
Registration and Insurance do not need to have the same name on it (depending on state). What’s important is that you get added as a named insured on your parents policy and not just “listed”.
For auto insurance: there is the named insured or policy holder. They pay the premium. Then there are the “listed” permissible users of the vehicle. They are allowed to use the vehicle on an incidental basis.
The carrier has an obligation to the policy holder because they pay the premium. They do not have the same obligation to the listed drivers. Depending on the claim they most likely reserve the right to deny the claim without much consideration.
Ask your parents to add you as a named insured on the policy. You probably already are because they would have needed to up your status when you became licensed within the household. You can then add the vehicle.
You would not need to add your parents to your registration in that case. There are a lot of differences between state laws and insurance carriers. If your parents have a broker I would recommend talking to them about it because I’m skipping over a lot of state specific detail that might be critical.
Hope that helps a bit.