Personal liability insurance

How old is your son?

get a condo

Ask your lawyer. Sounds like unusual requirement, but since you and your wifr already have the oukicy hy sweat it?

Hello. I can help and have experience dealing with liability claims, both as a long time insurance broker, claims adjuster, insurance exec, and contractor billing insurance companies. In my experience, liability is one of the most important aspects of an insurance which is often overlooked. The fact is that most claims in an NYC coop or condo is likely to affect neighbors, which creates a personal liability. Coops want their unit owners covered for these scenarios, because if the loss is unpaid, the Coop is at risk funding the loss.

At a basic level, the most realistic scenario is that a water, fire, etc claim happens in your unit, and then damages multiple neighbors and the coop building itself. These losses can add up quickly and can create a multimillion dollar liability to the unit owner. I had one case where there was an explosion in one unit that caused smoke to damage about 50 other units. There is another scenario where friendly fire smoke traveled upward and the neighbor claimed their child having brain trauma. Having adequate liability can serve as protection to pay out the other parties losses to rebuild the other structures and avoid creating personal financial distress. Of course, liability can also provide protection outside of your (i.e. coop/condo but the building really cares about damage to the property.

Coops & Condo all vary in their guidelines for unit owners. Some are silent with no minimum liability stated or enforced. Others want at least 1M (or more) as the minimum.

In the specific question above, it is very likely that the Coop wants the liability to cover the unit you are co-purchasing for your son. If you list this particular coop apartment that you are co-purchasing for your child as a coverage location on your current umbrella policy, you should be fine provided you have sufficient primary coverage on the coop itself. In other words, many umbrella policies have what is called a "minimum underlying limit" in order for the umbrella policy to be effective. So, even if you do include the co-purchased unit into your umbrella, it is likely you will need to have primary liability coverage first which should be part of the coop unit owners policy. This primary liability limit would pay out first before the umbrella limit. The details would be outlined on your umbrella policy. All this said, 500K is probably light for liability in todays market if you are consider the risks that multiplicative effect that NYC losses have on the building and neighbors.

Happy to answer any questions about liability, or any other matters of insurance in NYC. My company info is below.

Best wishes,
Seth
Prana Risk
www.prana-risk.com
info@prana-risk.com
917-438-0984

Nut, this thread is from more than a decade ago. The kid probably has kids of his own now. Seriously, there are few things more irritating on this board than a vendor bumping ancient threads in a vain attempt to shill for business.

pinecone,
See the little flag next to the number of posts? Hit that.

42yrs_RE_32_in_REO, why?