How we verify the law on this site

What gets checked

Every state page is built from a structured record with one entry per rule: injury, property damage and wrongful death filing deadlines, notice deadlines for claims against government bodies, the fault rule, the insurance system, minimum liability limits, PIP and uninsured motorist rules, damage caps, crash reporting duties and how to get the police report. Each entry holds the rule, a plain-English summary, the citation and the link we read it at.

Today the site covers 50 states with 516 linked citations on the state pages. 420 of them (81%) point to an official government website or to the law.justia.com copy of the code; the rest point to court or bar association pages. We do not cite law firms, lead generation sites or commercial legal directories as the source of a rule.

The order we check sources in

1. The statute or regulation on the state's own legislature or code website.
2. A copy of the same section on law.justia.com, when the official site cannot be read or linked directly.
3. The state insurance department, DMV, state police or court self-help page that applies the rule.
4. A published appellate decision, for rules that come from case law (for example, a state's fault rule).

News articles, law-firm blogs and secondary summaries are used only as leads. A figure goes on the site after it has been read in one of the four source types above.

When a figure cannot be confirmed

We would rather show less than guess. If a number (a dollar cap, a day count, a threshold) cannot be confirmed in a primary source, it is removed and the page describes the general rule and links to the statute or agency page instead. Fields we could not confirm are left empty rather than filled from memory or from a secondary site. Each state record keeps an internal note of what was read, where and when, and what is still open; that note is what the next review starts from.

Calculators and tools

• Each tool page explains its formula, lists its assumptions and links to the rule it applies.
• Worked examples on tool pages use clearly hypothetical numbers and match the tool's default inputs, so you can check the arithmetic yourself.
• Inputs are validated: tools refuse negative amounts, impossible dates and dates in the future rather than show a misleading result.
• Everything you type stays in your browser. No tool sends your information to us or to anyone else.

Guides and templates

Our 35 guides explain how claims usually work and link to the state pages for state-specific rules, so a number appears in one place and is maintained there. Letter templates are written to be adapted, not sent unread; each one says what to attach and what not to send.

Who does the checking

Serdar Arslan, the editor, reviews every page and is responsible for what is published. Software tools, including AI assistants, are used to organize research notes and to check our own pages for internal contradictions; they are not treated as a source. We are not lawyers, and the site is general information, not legal advice.

How often pages are reviewed

• State pages: at least once a year, and whenever we learn of a law change or a reader reports an error.
• Official links: run through an automated link checker at each review; links that no longer work are replaced with the current official page.
• The date at the top of each page is the date it was last reviewed. Changes are listed in our changelog.

Report a problem

If something is wrong or out of date, our contact page explains how to tell us. Please include the page address and, if you have it, the source.