What's car insurance "legal cover" for?

bonzer

Hi,

Most car insurers seem to offer "legal cover" for about an extra £25. Does anyone think it's needed?

It seems to be something to do with recovering any uninsured losses, but I'm not really sure about the exact circumstances where it may be required.

Thanks

Bonzer

scooby75

It is essentially paying to reclaim any losses that are not covered by the policy - some call it uninsured loss recovery. I've always taken it out - the sum of £20 odd per year is nothing really, especially when compared to the benefits it can offer if required. It will help to recover any losses that your policy does not cover such as the excess.

However, third party insurers generally do agree to pay such things anyway (at least the decent ones do), so whether it is needed as much as it used to be is a different matter. My one and only accident (none fault) resulted in the third party paying for repairs and incidental expenses - I had no need to use the legal cover. But I'd still buy it anyway.

InsideInsurance

Given the proliferation of no-win no fee solicitors the legal expenses insurance still comes into play for cases of certain split liability (eg narrow lane collision) or cases without injury as in these cases solicitors wont want to do no win, no fee

If you google around you can find MLP as a standalone product much cheaper, one firm used to give it away for free to anyone who asked for it! The reason being that whilst for the above no one wants to touch them all the 100% none fault accidents with injury attract large referral fees and so they can still make a profit by giving the product away.