Under Montana law, if you and your family purchase automobile insurance policies for multiple vehicles for underinsured motorist coverage, and pay a separate premium for each of those insurance policies, you may be entitled to stack insurance coverages on top of one another. For example, if you and your family own five vehicles, pay separate insurance premiums for UIM coverage for all five vehicles, and have a 100/300 policy limit, you and your family may be entitled to five times the amount of coverage.
If you think of insurance as a game of chance, the law makes complete sense. You and your family paid good money for separate insurance policies and the insurance carrier agreed to accept the risk of having to pay on each and every one of those policies. Because the insurance company controls how the policy is drafted and its terms, the insurance carrier is in the best position to evaluate risk and loss. Understanding how insurance policies interact with one another and how they may be stacked can become complicated, even for attorneys who work in the field for 15 or 20 years. For this reason, if you are receiving benefits under an underinsured portion of a policy, your injuries are likely sufficiently serious enough to warrant hiring an attorney. I strongly encourage you to have an attorney evaluate your insurance policy.
Recently, attorneys have attempted to stack bodily injury insurance policies just as they do underinsured motorist and med pay policies. A number of district court cases have ruled that bodily injury policies may be stacked. The Montana Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on this issue. Because the law is fluid and is subject to alternative interpretations, it is a good idea to contact counsel to discuss these issues in greater detail.