Potential Complications Of Sharing Renter's Insurance With A Roommate

Sharing renter's insurance with a roommate is possible, but it isn't advisable. Potential complications may affect your shared coverage and even ruin your friendship with your roommate. Here are three examples of such complications:

Sharing Bills and Check

If you are sharing renter's insurance with a roommate, the insurer will treat you as a single entity, which means it will issue you with a single bill (for your premiums) and settlement check (in the case of a loss). It will be your responsibility to share the bills and checks between yourself.

This can be tricky if one of you has more assets than the other, which is likely to be the case. For example, if your roommate's belongings are worth $25,000 and yours are worth $15,000, you need to figure out how to share the premiums and the checks taking into account that renter's insurance doesn't just cover personal belonging; it also has liability coverage.

Your Roommate's Insurance Histories Affects You

As discussed above, your insurance career will be treating you as a single entity. This also means that your roommate's insurance history (for the period you are on a single policy) will also go on your insurance history. This can be unfortunate for you if your roommate is more careless than you and racks up a lot of liability-related claims for the period you are living together. This may affect your insurance rates the next time you are switching insurance or renewing your policy.

Removing Your Roommate from the Policy

Lastly, you may also have a problem when it comes to removing your roommate from the policy because you need their permission to do it. This may not be a problem if your roommate wants out of the policy of their own accord, for example, if they are moving to another house or city. However, it can be a real complication if you want to kick out your roommate for the problems they care causing you. Maybe they don't want to share the insurance bill, doesn't pay their share of the rent or have been causing lots of accidents that have affected your renter's insurance costs.

Therefore, be very careful before adding a person to your renter's insurance policy. Renters insurance isn't that expensive, especially if you use an experienced insurance agent who can connect you to all the discounts for which you qualify for and advice you on how to minimize costs.

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