Insurance advice pls; registered keepers, main drivers etc

Mistermeaner

Hi

Me and my common law partner of 10+ years live together, jointly own our home and mortgage etc. although are not married in case that makes any difference. Multiple kids together etc. Joint bank accounts

We have 2 cars, for both I am the registered keeper (named on V5) and while not written anywhere I 'own' one (the red one) and she 'owns' the other (the blue one).

Insurance for each renews at different times, one in June, the other in November.

Going back in time she was the primary driver of the blue one, me of the red one. As such on our insurance she is the policy holder on the blue, me named driver.

Visa versa on the red one; I am policy holder, she is named driver

Life has evolved and it now happens that I generally take the blue one for work (where she is policy holder) and she takes the red one (where I am policy holder). Outside of work commute its pretty 50/50 

Insurance for red one has come due and I am wondering if it worthwhile changing the policy so that she is the policy holder and me named driver, and then doing the same to switch policy holder on the blue one when it comes up next year. Although part of me cant be bothered with the faff and also dont want to be without my own policy. Also dont want the expense of changing one or the other mid term. 

Does it really matter when you have 2 cars that are clearly jointly owned by a couple and usage would be nigh on impossible for any insurer to prove in event of a claim?

To be clear we've not set it up any particular way to save money just wanted to make sure we each had our own policy to build and maintain no claims etc. and i genuinely don't know if it would be cheaper or more expensive to switch it all round.

I have googled the principles and understand the legalities of 'fronting' but that seems more to do with deliberately fudging stuff to reduce costs.

Also reading the insurance paperwork one neither of them makes reference to 'main driver', only one policy refers to 'regular driver' and has 'yes' next to her name and 'no' next to mine (the one where she is policy holder)

Other option is we can just make sure to switch cars more regularly as its just become habit i take one and she takes the other! 

Thanks

Keep_pedalling

I can’t comment on the insurance thing apart from saying your marital status makes little difference, but it makes a huge difference if you don’t have wills in place, don’t have LPAs in place and if either of both of you have assets over £325k in assets (including shares of joint assets).

Car_54

Keep_pedalling said:

I can’t comment on the insurance thing apart from saying your marital status makes little difference, but it makes a huge difference if you don’t have wills in place, don’t have LPAs in place and if either of both of you have assets over £325k in assets (including shares of joint assets).

Indeed. A "common law partner" is a mythical beast who has no status in law, common or otherwise.

Okell

Keep_pedalling said:

I can’t comment on the insurance thing apart from saying your marital status makes little difference, but it makes a huge difference if you don’t have wills in place, don’t have LPAs in place and if either of both of you have assets over £325k in assets (including shares of joint assets).

Actually our insurer told us that as we were now married (we had previously lived together for over 30 years) it made no difference who was the main driver and who was a named driver.

Whether that's true of all insurers I don't know.

If I were the OP I'd simply ring my insurer up and ask them what I need to declare to them.

Mistermeaner

Starts looking at car insurance…. Ends up spending 20k on a wedding 

damn it mse  

sheramber

Check that as a named driver you are covered for commuting. 

Bigphil1474

It's normally an issue about who the main driver is, not the policy holder or named driver. If you are the main driver of the car, make sure you are the main driver on the insurance. If your partner is the main driver on the other car, make sure that is on the policy as well. Shouldn't make a big difference overall over the 2 policies. 

MyRealNameToo

Car_54 said:

Keep_pedalling said:

I can’t comment on the insurance thing apart from saying your marital status makes little difference, but it makes a huge difference if you don’t have wills in place, don’t have LPAs in place and if either of both of you have assets over £325k in assets (including shares of joint assets).

Indeed. A "common law partner" is a mythical beast who has no status in law, common or otherwise.

It doesnt in law but it can in contract etc, certainly a lot of pensions will pay out to a "common law" spouse as long as they have been cohabiting and living as if a married couple. Certainly not all though, friends got married after circa 30 years together because they discovered his pension would only pay out to a spouse or civil partner and not "common law"



Generally insurers dont care too much about partners assuming there isnt a massive age gap nor one has only just passed their test etc. It's still best practice to try and answer questions accurately irrespectively. Increasingly policies allow you to declare who the main driver is independently on who the policyholder is. Given the unaligned renewal dates and the inevitable challenge with NCD it's easier to keep the policyholder arrangement as it is and just change the main driver declared. 

Mistermeaner

thanks all for input. What we're going to do is just make sure we drive the 'correct' cars more. Simpler than faffing with changing details with insurance companies