How Your Relationship Status Can Affect Your Insurance

Michele Lerner

Your particular insurance needs depend, in part, on who you live with and your relationship to them. As such, most changes to your relationship status will warrant an insurance policy update.

If you don’t update that information, your insurance company may have incomplete information about who’s sharing your home or your car, and you may have too little or too much coverage.

Single with Roommates

Whether you rent or own, whether you live alone or with roommates, you should have an insurance policy to cover your home and possessions. Your guests, your roommates, and their guests can all cause damage to your home (and so can you, for that matter).

If you’re renting, the person on the lease typically purchases the renters insurance. If both your names are on the lease, you’ll need separate renters insurance policies; most insurance companies will not write one policy for unrelated friends.

If one name isn’t on the lease and that person doesn’t have a policy, the possessions they keep in the home are likely still covered by the policyholder’s insurer.

However, any possessions that are lost, destroyed or damaged outside of the home may not be covered automatically. If this person’s phone is stolen while they’re out, for instance, it wouldn’t be covered.

To have the off-premises possessions covered, the policy-holder would have to purchase an insurance endorsement to provide their roommate with off-premises possessions and liability protection.

If one person has bought a place and the other roommates are paying rent to them–think Blanche and the other Golden Girls–the owner should get a homeowners insurance or condo insurance policy and the renters should each get a renters insurance policy. Read More