Many people are unpleasantly surprised at some of the common vacation behaviors that invalidate coverage.
Spring break vacations can be lots of fun, but when something unexpected happens, you’ll want to make sure that the travel insurance you purchased will provide you with the coverage you think you have.
Coverage is nearly always invalidated if you were found to be intoxicated when the claimed event occurred.
Drinking is often a part of the spring break vacation experience. That said, it’s very important to remember that a travel insurance policy will nearly never cover you if it turns out that you were intoxicated at the time when an accident happened. That said, it’s important to keep in mind that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be fall-down drunk to have your claim rejected for falling down after drinking. Depending on the policy, even a couple of alcoholic drinks can often be enough to invalidate coverage.
One glass of wine or beer with dinner is typically always fine as that amount is unlikely to lead to impaired judgment. That said, much more than that and you might find that your claim is rejected if you’ve put yourself in danger.
That said, the situation changes when a travel insurance claim is made after drug use.
While most insurers will pay out for a claim made even if you’ve had one glass of something with alcohol in it, the same cannot be said after drug use. Unless you have a licensed doctor’s prescription for a medication, if you’ve been found to have used a drug before or at the time that something happened for which you made a claim, you are very unlikely to have that claim covered.
This means that if you were found to have used a drug that was not prescribed to you, you won’t have coverage for legal liability, trip delay/cancellation, medical expenses, or even rental excess cost coverage. In these cases, being “under the influence” of any non-prescribed drug will have cancelled the claim.
Therefore, before you go on spring break, make sure you know exactly what is and is not permitted by the travel insurance you buy. Otherwise, you could risk being deeply disappointed and deeply out of pocket for expenses you thought were covered.
