A little off topic but still a State Farm story and a registration/title story...
All of the cars are in my name alone except one - which has both DH and I. I was trying to use their online system to look up something and I can see the houses insurances but not the cars. I called their help line and was told that the insurance is under DH's name which is why I can't see it. WTH!?! All the car insurance policies are under his name and he doesn't even own a car (well, now he partially owns one)?
That’s how it is with ours. I don’t get it.
Someone tried to tell me that they put the car insurance under the person with the higher credit score to get you a better rte. I don't buy it. Our credit scores are neck and neck - in fact, sometimes mine is a few points higher.
Ours is the same way. Cars titled to me, but one car insurance is in DH’s name. It is because the car with the original State Farm policy on it was in his name. It was replaced with a car in my name. Same policy number, just different cars that are titled differently. Has never made any difference.
They tried telling me that, but I held the original policy with State Farm. When we married, my husband joined me. I owned one car then eventually owned 2. Somehow over the years, everything started coming in his name. I think one has both our names on it. And my sons car has mine and my son’s name. But it truly irritates me that most mail is addressed to my husband. Feels 1950s to me
Same. I was with state farm since 1984. Married in 1995 and brought my husband on board to my policy yet somehow he ended up primary.
It was more common back in the day for the husband to be put first.
It is true that someone who has better credit would be beneficial to be put first so long as other things like prior insurance, their prior limits, etc are also advantageous. My husband and I are neck and neck too, however I know when we originally got the mortgage on our house I was slightly better (marginally when it comes to credit scores but still) because I had 1 more year of credit history than him (just due to our ages in our case).
Longevity with the company also is a good reason to put someone first but sometimes other things override that in terms of rates.
The name on the title does not matter whatsoever in terms of who is named first on insurance, that matters for the registered owner. Insurance is less about that part unless you have a registered owner (like a family member or someone else) who doesn't reside in the household. The insurance company I worked for required registered owners to be listed on the insurance policy irrespective of who they were or where they lived because they have a rightful claim to the vehicle and could drive it at any point. But who was named first on a policy was not impacted by that.
It's hard to find these days but long time ago it was more common for households to have multiple policy numbers (like each car had it own policy number) and in those cases at least with the insurance company I worked for you could have various Primary Named Insureds also called PNI (this is what y'all are referring to when someone is named first) however that meant that certain discounts like auto/home, multi-car, etc wouldn't be eligible since the qualifications were the PNI were the same across the products. It is common for eligibility of discounts still to have the same person be PNI on all policies so the auto and the home being under the same person.
We've had it both ways for us depending on the situation. For instance when we were renting and we each had our own place we were under separate renters policies but with the same company AAA. When we got a rental house we used me as the PNI for the renters and the vehicles because I had been with AAA for many years at that point. When we moved into our actual house we ended up with my husband as the PNI for auto and homeowner's but stopped being with AAA for insurance (I still have the membership though) because at that time in my state AAA was not competitive for homeowners (renters they were). For us my vehicle is titled in my name, my husband's vehicle is titled in his name. However those vehicles were purchased prior to the marriage.
In any case y'all should just check with your agents about adding in your names as Secondary Named Insureds (SNI). If the insurance company has a spot for that then all your documents will then contain your name on it. We've always had that on any of the joint policies we've had but that's also because I've been in the insurance world for years and my agent is also my step-father-in-law. He knows that I want my name on paperwork (same as my husband would). Just talk with your agent. We've been with AAA, Nationwide, Geico and presently Progressive all have had both of our names on paperwork.
There was a delay (of course) and the vehicle is supposed to come in the week I am out of town, so we did paperwork early as to not lose the vehicle as they will only hold it for 72-hrs and also because we wanted to lock in our loan rate before it went up.
