There may be many reasons why you may want to exclude your wife or husband from your policy. Often having bad driving records and increasing the premiums is the reason. In most states, the majority of the national auto insurance companies allow spousal exclusion. However, they may need to meet special requirements like having no license or having his/her own car and insurance. Also, some states don’t permit spousal exclusion at all.
It is often possible to exclude a driver living with you in the same household. For example, your spouse may not even physically be able to drive for various reasons. However, some states specifically don’t allow exclusion of wives or husbands from auto insurance policies while they may or may not allow other people and they are;
| Hawaii | Kansas |
| Michigan | Minnesota |
| New York | Rhode Island |
| Vermont | Virginia |
| Wisconsin |
The good news is that if someone wasn’t driving for some time or never drove, they are unlikely to have anything bad in their records to affect the rates meaningfully. By the way, adding someone to a policy doesn’t necessarily increase the premiums.
If they have better records than you, adding a driver may actually reduce the costs. It may actually make sense to insure the car under their names and get yourself listed as an additional driver, if it is possible and you don’t mind. You are married and entitled to each other’s possessions by law anyway and usually ladies get lower rates so why not take advantage of it if you are using the car equally.
Even when it is allowed and possible, motorists should think very carefully about excluding a spouse from car insurance because it may actually cause many problems and inconveniences. It is a complicated process anyway. Couples do use each other’s automobiles and may have to in case of emergencies. Also, it is convenient not to think about who drives which vehicle, especially if you are in a sharing relationship.
If your wife or husband has a bad accident and driving record or credit score and it is increasing your rates, there are ways of saving money to mitigate the increased premiums. For example, going the opposite direction and joining the policies with a multi-car insurance policy could save you enough. And you may not need to buy Rental Car Reimbursement coverage on both cars because you can manage with one car should you have to. This would save you a little.
You will have to tell your insurer about your marital situation anyway since it is a material change in someone’s circumstances and you can save another 5% for just doing that anyway so you don’t have to dread it.
Most states and vehicle insurance companies either require a good reason or separate car and insurance before they go along with excluding a spouse (or any other driver in the household).
There are many married couples who live in different addresses or even they are legally separated but not divorced yet. In such cases, it is usually necessary for every party to have separate policies because the vehicles are kept in different properties at night. This is the case, even if each of them has to have the other listed on the policy because their state or provider doesn’t allow spousal exclusions from auto insurance policies.
Companies name the drivers excluded from driving on the policy documents with a rider to say that they won’t pay if such person(s) cause any damages and injuries with the insured automobile. So, it is important that such people don’t ever use the car in question. Otherwise, they won’t have coverage to pay for the losses and can be charged with driving without insurance.
In any case, you can get automobile insurance quotes with an exclusion and without and see how much the prices would be different. Some companies may not like the idea of leaving some drivers out but may actually heavily base their premium calculations on the main driver that having others on the policy can be less costly. You can only find out how each provider looks at a particular situation by getting a quote.