Some of you may have heard of “stacking” your car insurance; many of you probably have not heard of this practice and thus do not know what it entails.
Primarily, it refers mainly to uninsured motorist (UM) coverage and underinsured motorist (UMI) coverage. When you stack these types of coverages, you are basically collecting claims from one or more car insurance policies.
Now, there are many states out there which forbid this kind of behavior. You should not go against the law if that is the case in your state. However, there are states out there — nineteen of them, to be exact — which either allow this practice, or do not specifically address the idea of stacking in their laws.
You need to closely read your policy before doing anything else, to see if you will even be allowed to stack these types of coverage.
Stacking will work in mainly two different instances. In the first place, you may have multiple vehicles on your current policy, and you may have UM and UIM coverage on all of them. In that case, you can collect the limits for your policies under any number of vehicles necessary so that you can cover the full amount of damages. In the second place, you may have several policies with UM and UMI coverage, perhaps even from different insurers. In that cause you can file a claim with each policy to cover all your damages.