Can insurance co add my 19 year old daughter w/ a suspended license and charge me $600 more on my 6 month premium?

As a general rule, auto insurance companies operate under the permissive" driver philosophy. This means they provide coverage for the individual policy holder's vehicle when he is operating it or anyone else in his household who is a qualified driver.

A qualified driver is considered anyone who is physically of age and ability to drive a car, regardless of their legal status as a driver in the state. Based on this, even when a person like your daughter has a suspended license, the insurance company still expects that she will have access and ability to drive your insured vehicle.

Often times the primary individual who is covered on the policy will contend that this person will not drive, but the insurance company assumes that there could likely be an extraordinary circumstance when an unlicensed driver will get behind the wheel, such as during an emergency. For that reason they require that the unlicensed driver still be listed on the policy and the premium be increased.

Some states, such as California allow a practice called "excluded driver." This is when state insurance law allows the customer to officially exclude certain people from coverage of the insured vehicle, even though the excluded driver might be a child living in the insured's home, such as your daughter. This allows the premium to be reduced. The downside to excluding a driver is that if the child does drive the vehicle and is involved in an accident, there is no coverage by the insurance company.

Other states though do not allow customer's to declare a driver excluded, and your state of Virginia is such a state. This means that your insurance company is only following state law when it includes your daughter on the policy, even though her license is suspended.

The only course of action left to you is to contact your local state representative and encourage him/her to introduce legislation that would allow the "excluded driver" privilege to the auto insurance customers of Virginia.""