What does legal protection on car insurance cover exactly?

pinkteapot

Car insurance renewal due and not sure whether to add the optional motor legal protection or not.

What exactly does this cover?

For example, I know that the optional hire car cover guarantees a hire car for X days if our car is stolen or written off. We've decided not to bother with this, taking a chance based on the low odds of a total loss.

I'd like to know what sort of instances we'd need the motor legal protection for, so we can decide whether to get it.

We do have legal cover on our home insurance - would that cover us for legal advice needed in relation to car accidents, or would that normally only cover house-related issues?

OnanTheBarbarian

Legal protection on motor policies is there to cover any legal fees involved in pursuing recovery of uninsured losses or expenses you incur after a collision that was not your fault or where liability for the collision is being disputed by the other party.

Uninsured losses may include your policy excess, lost earnings, treatment expenses, personal injury compensation. These are all items that are not covered by your fully comp policy and therefore need to be pursued against the other party (subject to there being reasonable prospects of success)

Your home legal cover usually will exclude helping you on motor claims (so that insurers get an opportunity to sell you 2 policies).

If you don't have motor legal protection, it leaves you possibly having to fight your own battles as your insurer won't chase your excess back for you. Also, if you claim injury compensation, usually you should not see any deduction from any compensation.

If you opt against buying this cover and then have a bash which was not your fault and wish to claim injury compensation, you could just use a no win no fee lawyer, but the sting in the tail is a deduction of up to 25% from your pay out.

If you search via google etc, there are some stand alone providers that sell it cheaper than the usual £25-£30 most insurers charge and there are also some free services out there.

InsideInsurance

LE on your motor insurance covers the cost of recovering your out of pocket expenses in the case of an incident that is not 100% your fault so things like your excess, a hire car, loss of earnings and personal injuries.

It covers small track cases (under £10,000 without injury or £1,000 with injury) which no win no fee solicitors will deal with and on higher cases they wont charge you a success fee that many no win no fee will (though not all).

Needless to say Insurers are wanting to be able to sell as much as possible so Home insurance excludes motor accidents and Motor LE is tied to the insured vehicle

stator

What I don't like about these policies is that they are free to pick and chose which cases they take, so it's a bit like a no-win no-fee lawyer. You're not guaranteed anything at all

pinkteapot

Thanks all - makes sense!

We'll have a chat about whether to include it or not. Much appreciated.

InsideInsurance

stator wrote: »

What I don't like about these policies is that they are free to pick and chose which cases they take, so it's a bit like a no-win no-fee lawyer. You're not guaranteed anything at all

They will state that there has to be reasonable prospects of success however its a regulated product and so if you feel their assessment of the prospects is flawed you can always complain and go to the ombudsman.

thenudeone

two examples where I have used this cover:
1) To claim my excess from a farmer after hitting his cattle which had strayed on the A1(!!)
2) To claim against a council after a very large pothole buckled a wheel
Both were successful.

lisyloo

What I don't like about these policies is that they are free to pick and chose which cases they take

That's not completely fair.
They are entitled to decline cases where there is little prospect of recovery - so for example if the uninsured driver who hit you is a homeless vagrant, there is no point pursuing him because he has no money.

It's a regulated product with a contract between you so they can't just do as they please. Their decisions have to be reasonable or they can be challenged.

A no-win no-fee lawyer can genuinely cherry pick as they are under no obligation to take any business they don't fancy.

OnanTheBarbarian

lisyloo wrote: »

That's not completely fair.
They are entitled to decline cases where there is little prospect of recovery - so for example if the uninsured driver who hit you is a homeless vagrant, there is no point pursuing him because he has no money.

It's a regulated product with a contract between you so they can't just do as they please. Their decisions have to be reasonable or they can be challenged.

A no-win no-fee lawyer can genuinely cherry pick as they are under no obligation to take any business they don't fancy.

Uninsured vagrant - MIB claim so the lawyers would get paid, so that would have prospects of success.
As for NWNF lawyers, the legal Ombudsman does intervene in cases where the lawyers refuse to take on cases.

The reality is that there is little difference as to the cases an insurance backed lawyer will take on compared to a NWNF lawyer, providing there are"reasonable prospects of success" both will get stuck in.

The main difference is with non personal injury claims, which is where it pays to have some sort of motor Legal protection in place, be it paid for or a free product that will assist.

hwills77

InsideInsurance wrote: »

LE on your motor insurance covers the cost of recovering your out of pocket expenses in the case of an incident that is not 100% your fault so things like your excess, a hire car, loss of earnings and personal injuries.

It covers small track cases (under £10,000 without injury or £1,000 with injury) which no win no fee solicitors will deal with and on higher cases they wont charge you a success fee that many no win no fee will (though not all).

Needless to say Insurers are wanting to be able to sell as much as possible so Home insurance excludes motor accidents and Motor LE is tied to the insured vehicle

Further to what some of you guys have mentioned, I think there is an actual benefit of having motor legal protection as an insurance policy.

Whilst you can't expect everything to be compensated for if the accident was completely your fault, my policy still gives me a replacement car if this was the case for up to 2 weeks. Not something you'd get from a "free motor legal" membership or a no-win, no-fee company, who take a cut of your compensation anyway if you're successful.

If anyone's interested, my policy is with this company called Best Price FS, just under £20 (can't link as new). Oh and re: policy being tied to the insured vehicle, mine actually covers me in all cars (so long as I'm insured to drive them, of course...)