Sharing Renters Insurance With Your Roommate

You Can’t Sue Someone Listed in Your Policy

Accidents happen, and Renters Insurance is designed to protect you in those cases. However, it does not cover damages caused by people listed in the policy or their personal belongings. For example, if your roommate is responsible for harming your home or assets, you won’t be covered when suing him or filing a claim.

Imagine your roommate throws a party at your apartment without your consent, and when you arrive home, the party is over, and your unit is a wreck. After a long discussion where he refuses to pay for your couch and dining table repairs, you decide to file a lawsuit against him. Because you’re both listed in the policy you won’t be able to do it, even if he’s responsible for that messy party, for the broken couch and damaged dining table.

Claims Will Impact Your Record

Filing a claim will always leave a mark on your insurance record. When you share insurance with your roommate, and a loss occurs on their behalf, it will affect the claim history of the policyholder, even if he or she is responsible for the incident.

Keep in mind that your claim history directly influences the price of your policy. This means that if you received a few claims when sharing a home and insurance with your roommate, no matter who was responsible for them, if the policy is by your name you won’t be able to erase them even if you don’t live together anymore. Review the factors that affect your Renters insurance cost to see more details.

Savings Are Not That Much

Renters Insurance is generally affordable. However, if you only have it to share costs with your roommate, it may lead to bigger issues than the ones you’re trying to solve. Splitting the cost of insurance equally may seem fair at first, but what if you contribute differently or own a different amount of assets?

Imagine someone breaks into your shared apartment and steals many of your stuff. Luckily, you were also sharing Renters Insurance, allowing you to file a claim right after it happened. The problem comes when you receive your insurance payout and have to divide it equally. It wouldn’t be an issue if your personal belongings had similar costs, but yours were worth $10.000 and your roommate’s only $1.000, leaving you underinsured. If each had previously accessed an individual policy instead of sharing one, you would have protected your assets and your finances properly.

Conclusion

In conclusion, sharing Renters Insurance with a roommate is possible, yet it may come with a few compromises. It is important you consider every aspect when deciding what to do.

This means that, whoever’s the policyholder in the shared insurance, either your roommate or yourself, will assume the risk of being held responsible in the event there’s a filed claim. Remember that those records can’t be “erased” or eventually be prescribed, affecting future policy rates considerably.