Car Wrecks: Your Kid is Responsible and So are You

It’s a mixed blessing. Kids turn 16. You don’t have to drive them everywhere. But you also graduate to a whole new set of worries.

• Will they wreck the car.

• Will they hurt themselves.

• Will they hurt their friends.

• Will they hurt someone else.

There are a couple of ways to deal with these concerns. Teach your kids not to use their phones while driving. Make it okay to call home if they’ve been drinking or smoking dope. And buy insurance.

Some parents thing that they don’t need to buy very much coverage for their kids. The kids don’t have a nice car. The kids don’t have very much money. Etc.

This kind of thinking gets parents in trouble. That’s because it’s usually the parent—not the child—whose assets are on the line if their kid causes a collision.

In Washington we have something called the Family Car Doctrine. Here’s how the courts describe it:

“A person who [owns] [maintains] [provides] a motor vehicle for the use of a member of his or her family is responsible for the acts of that individual in the operation of that motor vehicle.”

It doesn’t matter whether the car is registered in the kid’s name. Or if the kid buys her own fuel. And, ultimately, these are not things you want to be fighting about if your kid runs over someone.

If your kid is going to drive, make sure they have as much insurance as you can possibly afford. (The other key here is that you cannot buy more uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage for your kid than the amount they have in liability coverage.)

These claims usually involve vehicles parents provide to teens. But social and economic trends have changed how families live, share expenses and use vehicles. We think these changes should support a broader, more modern application of the Family Car Doctrine:

• Adult children are living at home longer and parents often still provide or maintain a vehicle for their regular use.

• Multi-generational households are more common and vehicles are being shared among parents, adult children and grandparents.

• Families are supporting adult children financially for longer and co-signing loans and paying insurance premiums.

• Families now share vehicles informally, keeping certain vehicles available for regular use by multiple family members regardless of who owns or insures the vehicle.

When someone is involved in a collision, part of our job is to look beyond the obvious and identify every possible source of available insurance coverage. The Family Car Doctrine is one of those tools.

And in today’s world—where families share cars, finances and responsibilities in ways that are constantly evolving—it can open the door to recovery where the initial facts looked bleak.

Understanding how this works also helps families protect themselves and make smarter choices about insurance coverage.