What You Need to Know About Liability Coverage Before Your Child’s Graduation Party

Congrats to those with kids graduating. I can’t believe we are already talking about this again!!

Just a few tips to know your exposure and keep the guests safe at your child’s graduation party.

Questions that we receive in the office about graduation parties do vary quite a bit, but there are certainly some common themes. It is important to note that any time you have a significant gathering at your home you are probably taking on some additional liability exposure.

The first question that we get a lot is about an injury that happens on your property. Let’s say you have a volleyball net, everyone is enjoying the game, and two of the players get tangled up and sustain injuries. Two pieces of coverage may be in play: Liability and Medical Pay.

Medical Pay typically provides about $5K of coverage. A small amount, for sure, but it is designed to make sure that a person getting injured at your home has some nominal coverage available. The only things that trigger the coverage are that it happened at your premises and the injured party can provide a medical bill to be paid.

Liability provides 300K-$500K of coverage and also umbrella of $1MM or more if you have the coverage. This coverage comes into play if you have something happen where you may become liable. The first thing that comes to mind at functions like graduation parties is serving alcohol. In most cases, if something happens with an adult, they are responsible for their own alcohol consumption and the liability for something that happens off the property (an accident on the way home, etc.) would be your guest’s responsibility. An important exception to this is underage kids. You may be responsible for an incident involving an underage person who was drinking at your party if they create an issue after leaving the event. The difference is that you have supplied them with the alcohol, and they are not legal to drink it.

Obviously, our suggestion is not to serve minors at these events, and have some protocol in place to ensure they are not drinking.

All of these scenarios apply to any summer get-together, not just big parties.

As always if you have questions or need details, give your agent a call to review and discuss.

Thanks again for allowing us to protect your families!
Jon