I write for a school newspaper and have recently been asked an interesting question that I feel deserves to be turned into a humor column. My friend posed me this question, “If you got a sex change, would your car insurance rates change?” This is something I feel I am not fully qualified to answer. So, in my attempt to get this article done the way I want it, I turn to the teeming millions in a hope to make my article as funny as possible.
An interesting question, to which, unfortunately, I don’t have a definite answer. None of the actuarial colleagues whom I asked about this today was able to answer either. But our basic thought was that a sex change wouldn’t alter a person’s legal sex (as recorded on the birth certificate), and so there wouldn’t be a change in the person’s car insurance premiums.
No doubt it varies state by state, as these sorts of things always do.
I have owned an insurance agency for 24 years and I have had this exact question come up twice.
In both cased as soon as the transgendered (sp?) person received a drivers license stating the new sex we changed the rating to reflect this. Interestingly of the two cases one was male to female and the other female to male. Both were successful.
I’ve heard trans ladies joking that the “M” on their driver’s licenses stood for “Motorcycle.”