By Prosper Shaked, Florida personal injury attorney. Published: October 14, 2026.

Uninsured motorist coverage pays you, from your own auto policy, when the driver who caused your injuries has no bodily injury insurance. Underinsured motorist coverage pays when that driver has some bodily injury insurance but not enough to cover your losses. In Florida the two come as one coverage, usually called UM, and it matters more here than in most states, because Florida does not require most drivers to carry bodily injury coverage at all.

In the car accident claims I handle, the first thing I check when the other driver has nothing is the injured person’s own policy, and then the policies of the relatives they live with. The household policy is the one people forget. This guide explains how the coverage works, who it protects, how stacking multiplies it, and what the statute requires before an insurer can say you turned it down.

Quick answers

Is uninsured motorist coverage required in Florida? No. The rule works the other way around: if you buy bodily injury liability coverage for a vehicle registered or garaged in Florida, your insurer must include UM at the same limits unless a named insured rejects it or chooses lower limits in writing on the state-approved form. If you buy no bodily injury coverage, which Florida does not require, no UM has to be included.

Can I have UM if I did not buy bodily injury coverage? Usually not. The UM requirement attaches to policies that carry bodily injury liability, so a policy with only PIP and property damage usually has no UM either. Your declarations page will say.

How long do I have to sue? A lawsuit for UM benefits generally must be filed within five years of the crash, because it is a contract claim. The negligence claim against the driver has two years for crashes on or after March 24, 2023.

Key terms

The seven terms this guide uses

Uninsured motorist (UM) coverage. Coverage on your own policy that pays your injury damages when the at-fault driver has no bodily injury liability insurance, including a hit-and-run driver who is never identified.

Underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage. The same coverage, applied when the at-fault driver’s bodily injury limits are less than your total damages. Florida law treats an underinsured vehicle as a kind of uninsured vehicle. Fla. Stat. § 627.727(3)(b).

Stacked coverage. UM limits that add together across the vehicles insured, so two cars with $50,000 each can give the policyholder’s household $100,000 for one crash.

Non-stacked coverage. A lower-priced form of UM, accepted in writing, that generally stops you from adding limits across vehicles, with one exception for vehicles you do not own. Fla. Stat. § 627.727(8).

Rejection or selection form. The state-approved form a named insured signs to decline UM or to choose limits lower than the bodily injury limits. Fla. Stat. § 627.727(1).

Named insured. The person or company listed by name on the declarations page as the policyholder.

Class I and Class II insureds. Class I is the named insured and relatives who live in the named insured’s household; their coverage generally follows them. Class II is anyone covered only because they were occupying an insured vehicle.

Why does UM matter more in Florida than in most states?

The owner of a typical car registered in Florida must carry two coverages: $10,000 in personal injury protection (PIP) and $10,000 in property damage liability. Bodily injury liability, the coverage that pays the people a driver hurts, is not required of most drivers. Some carry none, and others carry low limits, often $10,000 per person, that a serious injury quickly exceeds. The Insurance Research Council estimated that 20.6 percent of Florida drivers were uninsured in 2023, about one in five.

What PIP and health insurance leave unpaid

The coverages you are likely to have do not fill that gap. Personal injury protection pays 80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages, up to $10,000 combined; medical benefits require treatment within 14 days and are capped at $2,500 unless a qualified provider finds an emergency medical condition (Fla. Stat. § 627.736). PIP pays nothing for pain and suffering. Health insurance may cover medical bills, often with a right to be repaid from a settlement, and pays nothing for lost wages or pain and suffering. Florida’s no-fault system pays PIP regardless of fault. A bodily injury or UM claim requires proof of the other driver’s fault and of your damages, and what can actually be recovered depends on the coverage that exists. For many serious injuries, the only coverage that exists is UM.

Coverage	Whose policy	What it pays	Deadline
PIP	Yours	80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages, up to $10,000 combined, regardless of fault	PIP has its own claim and lawsuit rules, not covered here
Bodily injury liability	The at-fault driver’s	Your medical bills, lost wages and pain and suffering, up to the driver’s limits; in most car crash claims, pain and suffering requires an injury that meets the threshold	Two years to sue the driver, for crashes on or after March 24, 2023
UM / UIM	Yours, and possibly a relative’s in your household	The same damages bodily injury would have paid, when the driver has none or not enough	Five years to sue your insurer, generally from the crash

UM or UIM: which one applies to you?

Uninsured applies when the at-fault driver has no bodily injury coverage for the crash. That includes a hit-and-run driver who is never identified, and it can include a driver whose liability insurer validly denies coverage or whose policy was canceled before the crash; in those cases the question to investigate is whether any other liability policy applies.

Underinsured applies when the driver has bodily injury coverage but its limits are less than your total damages. UM can then pay your damages above what the driver’s coverage provides, up to your UM limit. Neither payment is automatic: fault and damages still have to be proved, and settling with the driver’s insurer triggers the notice rule described in the steps below.

In Florida, your UM coverage sits on top of the driver’s coverage. The statute says UM is “over and above” the driver’s liability insurance and “shall not be reduced by a setoff against any coverage, including liability insurance” (Fla. Stat. § 627.727(1)). If the driver carries $10,000, your damages are $150,000 and your UM limit is $100,000, you can collect the driver’s $10,000 and then up to your full $100,000 from your own policy, $110,000 in all. Some states subtract the driver’s coverage from yours. Florida does not.

What does a UM claim pay for?

A UM claim covers the damages you could have recovered from the at-fault driver:

Medical bills beyond PIP, past and future, including surgery, injections, imaging and the therapy your doctors say you will need.
Lost wages and lost earning capacity, including the long-term effect on your ability to work.
Pain and suffering, but only if the injury meets the threshold in Fla. Stat. § 627.737(2): significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or death. The UM statute applies the same threshold to these damages (§ 627.727(7)); medical bills and lost wages do not require a permanent injury.
Wrongful death damages, when a person insured under the coverage is killed by an uninsured or underinsured driver. A Florida wrongful death claim is brought by the estate’s personal representative on behalf of the survivors and the estate.

What you still have to prove

What UM does not change is the proof. Your own insurer can dispute the other driver’s fault, the cause and size of your injuries, and your own share of fault, and it can raise defenses under the policy. Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6), added in 2023, a person found more than 50 percent at fault for their own injuries recovers nothing, and a smaller share of fault reduces the recovery. A UM claim is a first-party claim, made against your own insurer, but it is proved like a lawsuit against the driver.

Did you really turn the coverage down?

When an insurer says UM was rejected, check its answer against the signed paperwork, not against memory. The statute decides the question mainly through one document.

What the statute says, word for word, and two more rules

What the statute says

The rejection form must carry this heading in 12-point bold type: “You are electing not to purchase certain valuable coverage which protects you and your family or you are purchasing uninsured motorist limits less than your bodily injury liability limits when you sign this form. Please read carefully.” If a named insured signs the approved form, the law conclusively presumes an informed, knowing rejection of the coverage, or election of the lower limits, on behalf of everyone the policy covers.

Fla. Stat. § 627.727(1)

What this means for you: the signed approved form is the center of the question. If it exists and a named insured signed it, the rejection or lower limit almost always stands. If the form is missing, unsigned, signed by someone who is not a named insured, or not the approved form, the insurer loses the statute’s presumption, and whether coverage exists turns on the rest of the records.

Two more rules from the same subsection. A rejection or lower-limit choice carries into every renewal or replacement of the policy with the same bodily injury limits unless you ask in writing for more coverage. And your insurer must send you, at least once a year with your premium notice, a notice of your UM options; receiving that notice is not a rejection if you never signed the form.

How does stacking work?

Stacking adds the UM limits on each insured vehicle together. Florida allows it, and insurers sell UM both ways: stacked, and non-stacked at a lower price. Under § 627.727(8), an insurer may sell non-stacked coverage only after explaining its limitations on a state-approved form; if a named insured, applicant or lessee signs that form, acceptance is conclusively presumed, and the UM premium must be at least 20 percent lower than for stacked coverage. If the insurer cannot show a valid signed election that applies to the policy, the coverage is generally stacked.

What non-stacked coverage changes

Non-stacked coverage changes four things:

Limits on two or more vehicles are generally not added together for one crash; the non-owned-vehicle rule below is the exception.
If you are hurt in a vehicle you own, or a relative living with you owns, you get the UM on that vehicle.
If you are hurt in a vehicle that neither you nor a relative living with you owns, you get the highest single UM limit on one vehicle under a policy where you are a named insured or an insured family member, as excess over the UM on the vehicle you were in.
If you are hurt in a vehicle owned by you or a relative living with you that had no UM on it, that policy’s UM does not apply (§ 627.727(8)(d)).

On foot, on a bicycle or on a motorcycle

Pedestrians and cyclists are covered too. With stacked coverage, a Class I insured’s limits generally add together on foot as they would in a car. With non-stacked coverage, a pedestrian or cyclist may choose one vehicle’s UM limit under a policy where they are a named insured or an insured resident of the named insured’s household (§ 627.727(8)(e)). That is why UM is often the main coverage in pedestrian accident and bicycle accident claims. A motorcycle rider is occupying a vehicle, so the occupancy rules above apply instead. Motorcycles are not “motor vehicles” under Florida’s PIP law, so motorcycle riders are not required to carry PIP, and in a motorcycle accident the rider’s own UM, if they bought it, is often the coverage that matters most.

Who counts as an insured: Class I and Class II

UM follows people, but not everyone it covers is covered the same way. Florida courts divide insureds into two groups.

Class I is the named insured and the relatives who live in the named insured’s household, including a spouse. Their UM generally follows them: in their own car, in someone else’s car, on foot or on a bicycle. With stacked coverage they can combine the limits on the household’s insured vehicles; a valid non-stacked election narrows that as described above.

Class II is everyone else the policy covers, covered only because they were occupying an insured vehicle when they were hurt: a passenger, a friend borrowing the car, an employee driving a company vehicle. Their coverage is the UM on that vehicle. They cannot stack the policy’s other vehicles, and whether they are covered at all turns on whether they were occupying the vehicle, as the policy and Florida law define it, when the injury happened.

The household rule is what makes Class I so valuable. A grown child who lives with a parent is usually Class I under the parent’s policy, even though the child’s name is not on it and the parent’s car was nowhere near the crash.

A worked example: one crash, up to $225,000 in UM

A worked example (hypothetical)

A young woman is a passenger in a coworker’s car when an uninsured driver runs a red light. The coworker’s car carries $25,000 in UM per person. She lives with her parents, who insure two vehicles on one policy with $100,000 per person in stacked UM on each.

Under the coworker’s policy she is a Class II insured, a passenger: $25,000, that vehicle’s UM only.

Under her parents’ policy she is a Class I insured, a resident relative, so their coverage follows her into the coworker’s car.

Stacked, the parents’ two vehicles give her $100,000 + $100,000 = $200,000.

Potential combined UM limit for her injury: $25,000 + $200,000 = $225,000.

If the parents had validly chosen non-stacked coverage, she would get the highest single limit on their policy, $100,000, as excess over the coworker’s $25,000: a potential combined limit of $125,000.

Whether either figure is reached depends on the language of each policy, on whether every form holds up, on whether other injured people share a per-accident limit, and on the size of her damages, since UM pays damages, not limits.

When a company owns the policy

The Class II rule matters most when the named insured is a company. A company has no relatives, and employees do not become Class I just by working for it. Listing an employee as a driver does not change that. Unless the employee is also a named insured or the policy expressly covers people beyond occupying a vehicle, coverage turns on whether the person was occupying an insured vehicle.

I represented a tow-truck operator who was hurt on a job. The tow truck could not reach the car he had been sent to collect, so he got out, walked to the car and tried to move it by hand. Someone started the car’s engine, it rolled forward, and it struck him. The towing company’s commercial policy carried UM. The insurer denied the claim in writing: the named insured was a company, so the policy covered only a person occupying the insured truck, and its definition of occupying (“in, on, entering, exiting, or alighting from”) did not reach a man who had walked away from the truck to work on another car.

For anyone who drives for work, in a tow truck, a delivery van or a commercial truck, the employer’s UM may cover you only while you are occupying the vehicle as the policy defines it. Your own personal policy, where you are Class I, is often the coverage that follows you when you step away from it.

Steps that protect a UM or UIM claim

Tell your own insurer promptly. UM is a contract claim, and your policy has notice and cooperation duties. Late notice is a defense insurers use.
Get medical care right away and follow your doctors’ plan. PIP medical benefits require initial treatment within 14 days, and the medical record is the evidence of your damages. Missing PIP’s 14 days does not by itself end a UM claim.
Do not complete a settlement with the at-fault driver without notice to your UIM insurer. Before settling with the driver and the driver’s insurer for less than your full damages, written notice of the proposed settlement goes by certified or registered mail to every UIM insurer that provides coverage. Each has 30 days after receiving it to approve the settlement or, to keep its right to pursue the driver, pay you the amount of the driver’s offer itself (§ 627.727(6)). Signing the driver’s release without that step can cost you the UIM claim.
Get the coverage documents listed in the next section, for every policy in the household, and check stacking instead of accepting the insurer’s word for it.
Prove the claim as you would prove a lawsuit. The other driver’s fault and your damages, and for pain and suffering, an injury that meets the § 627.737(2) threshold. Your insurer can contest each of them.
If your insurer will not pay what the claim is worth, Florida’s bad-faith statute may apply. A refusal to pay is not bad faith by itself. A civil remedy notice must be filed and the insurer given 60 days to cure (§ 624.155(3)); after that, you must establish what you were owed and prove bad faith, and mere negligence is not enough. If bad faith is proved, the damages against a UM insurer can include the full amount of your damages, even above the policy limits (§ 627.727(9)).

Documents you will see

When UM is in question, ask for the complete policy, including its UM coverage form, definitions, exclusions and endorsements, and for the documents below, for every policy in your household, before accepting an insurer’s answer.

The five documents and what to check on each

Document	What it is	What to check
Declarations page	The summary page of your policy: named insureds, vehicles, coverages and limits.	Whether UM is listed, at what limit per vehicle, and whether it says “stacked” or “non-stacked.”
UM selection or rejection form	The state-approved form for declining UM or choosing lower limits. § 627.727(1)	That it is the approved form with the required heading, that a named insured signed it, and that it applies to this policy, including through renewals and replacements.
Non-stacking election form	The state-approved form for accepting non-stacked coverage. § 627.727(8)	That it is the approved form explaining the limitations, who signed it (a named insured, applicant or lessee), and that it applies to this policy.
Annual notice of UM options	A notice sent with your premium notice at least once a year. § 627.727(1)	It informs you; it is not a rejection unless you signed the form.
Notice of a proposed settlement	The letter, sent by certified or registered mail, telling your UIM insurer that you intend to settle with the at-fault driver for less than your full damages. § 627.727(6)	Proof of mailing and the date it was received; the insurer’s 30 days run from receipt.

When the at-fault driver was driving someone else’s car, add the owner’s policy to the list. The dangerous instrumentality doctrine can make the owner responsible, and the owner’s policy may provide coverage for other drivers, subject to permission and the policy’s terms.

The deadline: five years, not two

A lawsuit for UM or UIM benefits generally must be filed within five years, because it is an action on a written contract (Fla. Stat. § 95.11(2)(b)). The five years generally run from the date of the crash, not from the date the insurer denies the claim. Some policies contain terms that pause the clock until the claim against the at-fault driver is resolved, but no one should plan around that.

The negligence claim against the at-fault driver has two years for crashes on or after March 24, 2023 (§ 95.11(5)(a)); earlier crashes generally had four. Evidence of fault and injury gets harder to preserve with time, and your policy’s notice duties can require action long before either lawsuit deadline.

When your own insurer says no

Some UM denials turn on fault, damages or the injury threshold. Others are coverage answers, and each of those points to a document or a definition you can check:

“You rejected UM” or “you chose lower limits.” Ask for the signed form and check it against § 627.727(1).
“Your coverage is non-stacked.” Ask for the signed non-stacking election under § 627.727(8).
“You were in your own vehicle that had no UM.” Under a valid non-stacked election this exclusion is allowed (§ 627.727(8)(d)); with stacked coverage it generally cannot be applied to a Class I insured for that reason alone. If the car that hit you belongs to someone in your own household, a separate exclusion may apply.
“You are not an insured.” The Class I and Class II question: are you a named insured, a resident relative, or covered only as an occupant? On a company policy, were you occupying the vehicle as the policy defines it?
“You settled without telling us.” The § 627.727(6) notice, and whether the insurer answered within 30 days.
“You reported it too late.” What the policy required and when the insurer actually learned of the crash.

When the answer does not hold up, the dispute is with your own insurer, and it is resolved the same way as any other insurance dispute: with the policy, the forms and, if necessary, a lawsuit.

Frequently asked questions

Does UM cover a hit-and-run?

Yes, when the driver is never identified. Report the crash to the police right away and to your insurer promptly, keep witness names and photos, and get the Florida crash report. You still have to prove that the unidentified driver’s negligence caused your injuries.

I was hurt in an Uber or Lyft. Whose UM applies?

Florida’s rideshare law requires the insurance that covers an Uber or Lyft trip to include UM and UIM as § 627.727 requires, which also allows a written rejection. Which policy applies depends on the phase of the trip, the policies involved and any valid elections, and your own UM may apply as well.

The adjuster told me there is no UM. Should I accept that?

Not before you see the documents: the declarations page, the forms and every policy in the household. The adjuster may be right, but the answer is in the paperwork.

Can I sue my own insurance company?

Yes. A UM claim that does not resolve is usually decided in a lawsuit against your insurer, or in arbitration if the policy validly requires it. The insurer can contest the other driver’s fault, your damages and coverage itself.

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