Car written off, questions!

Slo

Friends mom was in an accident, her Kia (ew) got written off. I've been looking at the average prices for the vehicle, and it seems to be less than what she owes for her financing still!

She's 0% at fault, this happened in BC Canada.

Tried to keep it to the point, but what does she do? Does she bite the bullet and pay the difference?

Thats crud.

Anywhoo, any anectdotes or advise or stories, oh wealth of PennyArcade knowledge?

VisionOfClarity

Pretty much, she's on the hook. Not sure if she can sue the other driver for the difference but insurance does not owe her.

noir_blood

Yeah, she's unfortunately pretty much screwed unless she bought gap insurance.

Similar thing happened to my dad, where he bought a relatively newish used car from a dealer, only to have it stolen a couple of months later. He'd actually been paying more than they asked every year, to the point he was like five months advance and the insurance people barely gave him enough to cover the rest of what he owed.

Dhalphir

In most places you need to buy a separate (extra) type of insurance to cover exactly what you currently owe on the finance.

It sucks but is an unfortunately reality associated with market values of cars falling faster than you can pay them back.

Zeon

In canada im pretty sure as a condition of financing a vehicle you need to have whats called... i think Gap Protection. Basically if you write off the car and it ends up being worth less than what you owe, insurance will pay what you owe instead. The shitty part is now you need to go finance a new car and start over again.