My GF crashed her car into my car!

hubertb

My girlfriend scratched her car and mine while pulling out of her parking space. My car was in the next spot. Damage to both doors of her car and to the front bumper of mine.

My question is, is the relationship between us a material fact for the purposes of the insurance claim? My gut instinct is that it is not and it might complicate things if we do mention it. We have separate addresses and are not married. 

Any advice? Are there complications related to claiming against the insurance policy of someone who is not completely unrelated?

DullGreyGuy

No complications as long as you each own/registered keepers of your own vehicles (or a finance company is).

Only issues occur is when you damage your own property with your car in which case the property claim has to be dealt under its own insurance and cannot be claimed off the policy of the vehicle you were driving as you cannot sue yourself. 

molerat

Are either of you named drivers on each other's policies ?

If not then I see no problems.

Aretnap

The liability section of home insurance policies tends to exclude liabilities to close family members or members of your household, but car insurance is required by law to cover all your liabilities to everybody. So it makes no difference whether the person who hits your car is your spouse, your girlfriend, a neighbour or a stranger. They claim for the damage to their car on their own policy. You either claim on your own policy and your insurers recoup the costs from her insurers, or else you inform your own insurer for information only, and try to claim directly from her insurer.

The only difference is that you are presumably more worried about what happens to her insurance premium next year than you would be if it was a total stranger, so if the damage is minor you might want to consider fixing it yourselves or just living with the scratches rather than either of you making a claim. Obviously that depends on the amount of damage, the age of the car, how precious you both are about driving a car with a bit of a dent etc etc.

The other thing to be aware of is that if the insurers end up arguing about something like the first of the repairs, there is a small but non-zero chance that you might end up having to issue court papers against your girlfriend as part of the claims process. Some people might find this a little awkward.

hubertb

Thanks for these answers.

So it looks like she will loose her no claims bonus but I might not.

As a matter of interest, if, in the future, we were named drivers on each others policies and if we registered the cars at one address and got one insurance policy for both, would we then both loose no claims bonus? (Hopefully just a theoretical question since this kind of accident will hopefully not be repeated!)

DullGreyGuy

hubertb said:

As a matter of interest, if, in the future, we were named drivers on each others policies and if we registered the cars at one address and got one insurance policy for both, would we then both loose no claims bonus? (Hopefully just a theoretical question since this kind of accident will hopefully not be repeated!)

If you truly only had 1 policy covering both cars then there would only be 1 NCD and yes it would go down in the event of a fault claim. 

Most Multi-Car "policies" however are not technically a single policy but multiple policies with a harmonised start date, paperwork and payment. In these cases each policyholder has their own NCD and you'd be in the same position as you are now. 

The main issue happens when you have one person owning both cars or where the car hits your house instead because you cannot sue yourself. 

TadleyBaggie

You shouldn’t lose your NCB but might find your premium increased. 

Aretnap

hubertb said

As a matter of interest, if, in the future, we were named drivers on each others policies and if we registered the cars at one address and got one insurance policy for both, would we then both loose no claims bonus? (Hopefully just a theoretical question since this kind of accident will hopefully not be repeated!)

You can't really get one insurance policy for two cars, unless you're a motor trader or a fleet manager etc. As a family you can get a "multi-car policy", but on closer reading these tend to be separate policies on one piece of paper, each with its own NCD, and allegedly an extra discount for having two policies with the same insurer.

As DGG says the only possible complication would be if you damage your own property, eg if you reversed into your own car while driving your GF's car. In that case the third party section of your GF's policy wouldn't cover the damage you'd done to your car - as you have no legal liability to yourself for damaging your own property. You'd have to claim for your car in your own policy and your GF's car on her policy - and that would be two separate claims and NCDs on two separate policies affected.

Being named drivers on each others policies would have no effect on how the claim works (not sure why Molerat asked the question) but would mean that come renewal time your both had to declare the accident on both policies - possibly making it like you'd had four accidents between you. 😮

DullGreyGuy

Aretnap said:

hubertb said

As a matter of interest, if, in the future, we were named drivers on each others policies and if we registered the cars at one address and got one insurance policy for both, would we then both loose no claims bonus? (Hopefully just a theoretical question since this kind of accident will hopefully not be repeated!)

You can't really get one insurance policy for two cars, unless you're a motor trader or a fleet manager etc. 

In principle there is no reason why you cannot, it causes problems when people want to stop having a multi-car policy but thats more of a reason for insurers to offer them to create stickiness rather than a reason not to. 

LV I believe has a true multi-car single policy, certainly in a post earlier someone found out that only the single policyholder has any NCD unlike most multi-car policies. Direct Line Select may be another one, though online information is limited