A Mom's Guide to Protecting Your Family Before Summer

I became a personal injury attorney before I became a mom. Both jobs changed the other.

As an attorney, I see what happens when a family assumes they are covered and finds out they are not. When a mom thinks her minivan is protected on a school run and realizes, after the crash, that the coverage she thought she had was never actually there.

As a mom, I now think about safety the way my clients wish they had before the moment their life changed.

Mother's Day is this weekend. Summer is a month away. Kids are about to be out of school, in the car more, in the pool more, at parks and camps and pickups and drop-offs more. Every mom I know is already mentally running through the summer calendar trying to figure out how to make it work.

Here is the thing I want you to add to that list. It takes ten minutes. It is free. And it might be the single most important thing you do for your family this month.

This is the guide I would give to my best friend if she asked me what to check before summer starts. I am giving it to you.

The 10-Minute Policy Audit Every Mom Should Do

Pull up your auto insurance declaration page. Not the card in your glove box. The full dec page. Most carriers have it in the app or the online portal. If you cannot find it, call your agent and ask them to send it.

Here is what you are looking for:

UM/UIM coverage. Uninsured and underinsured motorist protection. In Florida, you can reject this entirely, and a lot of people do because no one explains what it is. It is the coverage that steps in when the other driver has no insurance or not enough insurance. If your dec page says "rejected," that is a problem. If the limits are low, that is also a problem.

Stacked versus non-stacked UM. If you have more than one vehicle on your policy, stacking multiplies your UM limits across each vehicle. The difference between stacked and non-stacked can be tens of thousands of dollars of coverage. Most families do not know the word exists.

Bodily injury limits. These are what protect you when you are the at-fault driver and someone else gets hurt. State minimums in Florida are not nearly enough for a serious injury. If you are driving your kids around in a family car, this limit matters.

PIP coverage. Personal injury protection. Covers a portion of your medical bills and lost wages regardless of who was at fault. Every Florida driver has to carry this. Make sure yours is there and current.

Property damage. Covers the other person's vehicle or property when you cause an accident. State minimums here are also very low.

If you look at your dec page and any of these items look wrong, rejected, or suspiciously low, do not try to figure it out alone. That is what a policy review is for.

The Glove Box Check

The glove box is the most ignored part of most cars. Every few months, I clean mine out. Here is what should actually live in there.

Current registration and insurance card. Check the expiration dates. Expired cards in a glove box are the number one reason people get tickets they should not have gotten.

Your license info. Backup copy in case your wallet is not with you.

Pediatrician contact card. If someone else is driving your kids and there is an accident, you want the emergency responder to know who to call.

Emergency contacts list. Written, not just in your phone. Phones die. Phones get thrown across the car in an impact.

A small first aid kit. Not a trauma kit. Just the basics: bandages, antiseptic wipes, a few gauze pads, kids' pain reliever.

Flashlight. A small battery-powered one. Not your phone.

A pen and small notepad. If you are ever in an accident, you need to write things down. License plates, witness names, insurance info. Your phone is for photos. The notepad is for everything else.

Car manual. Most people never open it. But if a warning light comes on with your kids in the back and you have no idea what it means, you want the manual.

Five minutes. Ten items. Most of them you probably already own. Some of them you can pull together this weekend.

The Conversation to Have With Anyone Who Drives Your Kids

Your spouse. Your parents. The nanny. Your best friend who does carpool with you. Your oldest kid if they are about to start driving.

Before summer starts, have this conversation.

What to do if there is an accident with my kids in the car. Call 911 first, always. Then call me. Then do not move the kids unless there is an immediate danger. Take photos of everything. Do not apologize or admit fault at the scene even if you think it was your fault. That is for the insurance companies to determine.

Who to contact for medical care. Pediatrician, urgent care, ER. Know where the closest one is to your regular routes.

The glove box tour. Show them what is in there and where to find it.

Car seat check. Is the car seat installed correctly in whatever car the kids might be in? Half of car seats in this country are installed incorrectly. It takes five minutes to check.

This is not a paranoid conversation. It is a normal one. The same way you tell a babysitter where the first aid kit is, you tell anyone who drives your kids what to do if something happens.

What I Want You to Walk Away With

Being a mom is already full-time work. I am not adding to your list for the sake of adding to your list.

But here is what I see in my practice that breaks my heart every time. A mom gets hit. A grandparent gets hit with the kids in the car. A teenager gets hit on the way home from a friend's house. And then the family finds out that their policy had gaps, or their UM was rejected, or their coverage limits were set a decade ago when the car was paid off and the limits were never updated.

The moms in those cases always say the same thing. "I had no idea."

I want you to know. That is why I do this work and that is why I am writing this piece.

Pull the dec page. Do the glove box check. Have the conversation. If you want to go deeper, grab the free insurance guide on the site. It walks through what every family should know about their coverage.

And if you want a full auto policy audit with a written report and a call to walk through it, you can purchase that here. It's a small investment compared to what one uncovered crash can cost a family. Reach out and we will tell you how it works.

That is the mom's guide.

--> Share this with a mom who needs it. Summer starts sooner than any of us are ready for.