Every driver in Mississippi should have insurance on their vehicle that protects them from liability. Your policy is an important form of financial protection if you are to blame for a crash. When someone gets hurt, your bodily injury coverage can pay their hospital bills or cover their lost wages. Your property damage coverage can pay to fix someone’s vehicle or replace their smashed phone.
When you aren’t the one who caused a crash, you depend on another driver’s insurance coverage. Typically, the person affected by a collision would be the one to file an insurance claim or a personal injury lawsuit. However, you may feel the effects of a crash despite not personally suffering the worst consequences by virtue of its effect on a family member.
If someone in your family recently died in a fatal car crash, surviving family members may need to file an insurance claim. Unfortunately, insurance alone may not be enough to reimburse your family for the financial impact of this loss.
State requirements fall short of lifetime losses
Drivers in Mississippi can carry as much insurance as they think is necessary, but they absolutely have to carry the mandatory minimum amount of coverage. State law requires $25,000 worth of injury-related liability coverage.
Sometimes, your loved one’s policy could help by providing some underinsured motorist protection to add to what the other policy will pay. If that is all you have to make a claim against after a loved one dies, it might not be enough to pay for their hospital bills, let alone replace the wages they could have earned had they survived.
Mississippi does allow for wrongful death claims
When an individual or a business causes someone’s death either through illegal behavior or negligence, the surviving family members of the deceased individual have certain rights. One of the most important rights is the right to file a civil lawsuit.
Wrongful death claims can compensate the surviving dependent family members of someone who died in a fatal car crash for the full value of their life, including their household services and lost income. Such claims are often necessary because insurance will not properly compensate a family struggling to adjust to life without a loved one.
Knowing what options you have following a fatal car crash can make it easier to pursue justice.