I'm told that an ins. policy would be split in half if two people were to be paid. Is it true?

It depends on the deal that is negotiated.

I am assuming that you are talking about a policy of insurance that has a policy limit amount per person and double that (or triple that) per occurrence. To give an example: Let's say that I drive my car into a school bus with 25 passengers, and in the accident I cause one person to die, and 24 people have minor bumps and bruises. Let's say that my insurance limits are $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence. The family of the dead person will get $100,000; the remaining $200,000 would be doled out between the 24 others, based on the extent of their injuries. If the remaining 24 people have minimal claims, they could each get a few hundred, or even a few thousand dollars, and whatever was not paid out would go back to the insurance company.

Each injured person is entitled to a recovery to the extent the prove the amount of their damages. If one was hurt more, they would generally be entitled to a bigger recovery. This becomes an issue when there is a small insurance policy to pay the claims. For instance, if there is a 15,000/30,000 liability policy that means each person would be entitled to a maximum of 15,000.00 for their injuries from the accident (up to a maximum total payout of $30,000). If both persons have damages which would result in a recovery over $15,000, that would mean that yes the $30,000 would be split in two. You should discuss with an attorney what you are being told by the insurance company if that is who is telling you this. You will probably be asked to go over some more specifics of your case and injuries for the attorney to be able to assist you than you have provided here.

Nothing is ":split" The policy covers both injured parties and they will be paid if at all on the basis of their injuries and bills (and the liability).

Assuming you are referring to an Automobile Insurance Policy it is possible that two injured people may equally "split" money from an insurance company. Most automobile insurance policies have "split" Bodily Injury/ Liability Coverage limits, the split being a "per person" and a "per accident" total. For example, someone may have $25,000.00/ $50,000.00 limits. What this means is that the most any one person from an accident can recover is $25,000.00 and that the most the insurance company will have to pay, to all injured persons, is $50,000.00. If there are only 2 people injured, each could receive, at most, $25,000.00 from the insurance company. However, if there are 3 or more injured people, the most any one person could get is $25,000.00 and the injured people would either have to agree how to split the $50,000.00 or go to court and let a judge or jury decide how much each is to get. This should answer the second part of your question about one victim receiving more severe injuries than the other. Each of these victims may not necessarily get the same amount and they are not fighting over the same insurance policy money; each has a maximum he or she could get, which would be 50% of the total insurance proceeds available.

That's probably not true. Most car insurance policies provide a per person coverage amount and a total claim coverage amount. For instance, many people carry a 25/50 policy, which means there is $50,000 in total coverage available for every incident (i.e. a car wreck) but no one person injured in the incident can receive more than $25,000. This works out fine if there are only one or two people injured since no one has to "share" insurance coverage. It does not work out so well when there are three or more persons injured, since they would conceivably be going after some of the same money. Also, it is not automatically split equally. Each person should receive the amount his or her claim is worth, possibly pro rated if there are more than two persons injured due to the issue of having to "share" insurance coverage that I described above.

Policies usually come in increments such as 25/50, 50/100, 100/200. For a 25/50 policy, which is the most popular because it is the minimum that you must have in South Carolina, it pays up to $25,000 per injury, and a total of $50,000.00 for all injuries. Thus, if one victim has $13,000.00 in damages, and another has $32,000.00 in damages, it will pay $13,000.00 for one and $25,000.00 for the other. Even though it is paying less than $50,000.00 overall, it can pay only $25,000.00 per injury. If both injuries exceed $25,000.00, it will pay $25,000.00 to each, because that is the limit per injury, and it is within the total cap for all injuries. It gets more tricky when you have three or four injured. Each injury may have less than $25,000.00 in damages, but when you add them all up, it may exceed the $50,000.00 limit for the whole case. Then, you have to reach a global settlement that all agree to, or you must let the court apportion the insurance money among all of the claims.

If it's a single limit policy, then there must be a division of it, not necessarily 50/50 though. It's dependent on injuries. If it is a split limit policy (i.e. 25,000/50,000) - and the crash involves 2 claimants the most either of them can get is $25,000. If only one claimant the most he/she could get is $25,000. The policy is written so it's $25,000 for one person and $50,000 for 2 or more (if there were 10 claimants they would have to divide up the $50,000). Good luck.

It may not be in half, but it is limited to the per person limit in the policy which may be half or may not.