Last month I parked my 4 week old van on a residential street in Chippenham. When I returned I found my trailer buried in the back of it and a Mondeo buried in the back of that.
I won't go into a rant about how could you miss a bright white, LWB van and trailer parked on a dead straight road.
I'm here to warn you about the danger of not taking out legal cover.

I was always under the impression that:

1. Your insurance company would recover your losses from the 3rd party if you weren't to blame
2. Legal cover was just there to cover any court related costs in the event of civil action

It turns out that this isn't the case at all.

I have got my van back after having over £8000 worth of repairs carried out and I had to pay the excess and VAT to the garage.
That came to £2600 but no problem because I can claim that back through my insurer (they even told me this)
When I put in the claim I was told "sorry, you don't have legal cover you have to persue the claim yourself as it's an uninsured loss"
So then I asked about the trailer and towing fees....... "sorry, you don't have legal cover you have to persue the claim yourself as it's an uninsured loss"

I'm currently £3500 out of pocket and not sure what my next move is.

This is a very simple case so I'd hate to see what happens if blame was disputed or there was an injury.

Hopefully most of you knew what I didn't, but if I can save anyone having to go through this, it'd be worth it.