Have you checked with the insurance agent for her policy to see if you can be added to the policy as a frequent non-owner driver? You should be able to do that and I think it would cost a lot less than picking up a separate policy.

That’s a good idea! She doesn’t have a good relationship with her dad, may get the car taken away. Only her dad has access to change their policy and he likely will not do that for us.

If she is on the policy she should be able to get a copy of it. Then review it to see what it says about other drivers. Most policies allow for someone else to drive the vehicle and to be covered. Being a named driver on the policy just makes it a lot easier if there’s a claim.

If the policy is under her dad’s address and states his address is where the car is primarily garaged/parked, when in actuality it’s not you’ll have bigger problems if an accident occurs.

Do you mind elaborating on the problems? I’m not familiar with car insurance. But it sounds like the car isn’t allowed to be “housed” at anywhere else besides the address on the policy? We moved out recently so that’s why the addresses are different. Should that be updated with the insurance policy? We moved 10 minute drive away from them.

The rate is based on where the car is “housed” because that’s where they assume you’ll be doing the majority of the driving and parking.

If they figure out that you’re housing it somewhere else, they can deny any payout because you’re committing fraud. Same if they figure out that you’re driving it frequently and aren’t on the policy.

Gotcha that makes sense. We will look into updating this!

Honestly it’s probably not like they’d find it cost-effective to put a team of insurance investigators on the case if you did have to file a claim- you would just need to be careful about what you say to them.

“We borrowed it for the weekend/week” etc

This is correct, OP needs to get his gf to change the garaging address on the policy and add him as a driver.

A quick overview of how car insurance works in MA. The insurance is with the car and you assign a primary driver to the car on policy, You are allowed to lend your car to anyone you want and they are covered when borrowing your car even though they are not on the policy. However the caveat to that is anyone living in the same household as you must listed on the policy as a secondary driver to be covered. This is under the assumption that people living together with likely borrow each others car more often than anyone not living with the car's owner.

If the dad has the car policy and neither of you is listed on policy you could get away with that if anything happened by your dad telling the agency he lent the car to whichever one of you for that day. But if you wanted to do it right, he should change the "garaging" location to your address, list your partner on the policy as the primary driver and then you as secondary. Note that the insurance cost may change do to change of address and the records and experience of the primary driver. So if she is a relatively new driver or your town is considered higher crime than dad's, these could drive up the premium.

That’s called insurance fraud

Yup. See my post above.

You do not have an insurable interest in the car as you are a non-owner. The father/car owner needs to call his insurance broker/agent and make whatever policy adjustments are needed to cover the situation properly. You can pay the father the additional sum after the new/adjusted policy is issued.