What changed in Kentucky
Insurance law does not sit still, but most guides are written once and left alone. Repealed programs and retired forms keep circulating for years. This is what actually changed inKentucky, when, and where to verify it.
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July 15, 2026
Minimum coverageNo-fault benefits got their first real increase since 1974 — $500 a week instead of $200
2026 Ky. Acts ch. 149 (HB 627), which became law without the Governor's signature on April 14, 2026 and took effect July 15, 2026, rewrote three sections of the Motor Vehicle Reparations Act. KRS 304.39-130 now caps work loss, survivor's economic loss, replacement services loss and survivor's replacement services loss at five hundred dollars ($500) a week, up from the two hundred dollars ($200) set in 1974. Inside the definition of medical expense in KRS 304.39-020, the allowance for funeral, cremation and burial charges rose from $1,000 to $5,000. The same Act capped each medical charge a reparation obligor pays at the workers' compensation fee schedule established under KRS 342.035 — with a floor at the schedule in effect on July 15, 2026 — gave providers 180 days to submit a charge, and barred them from balance billing the insured or reporting the balance to credit bureaus. What did not change is the figure most guides quote: the overall ceiling on basic reparation benefits is still $10,000 per person per accident. Section 7 of the Act limits all of this to basic and added reparation benefits issued or renewed on or after July 15, 2026, so a policy written before that date keeps the old $200 weekly limit until it renews.
2026 Ky. Acts ch. 149 (HB 627) — enrolled text, Legislative Research CommissionJune 27, 2025
Coverage lapseMonthly insurance reporting is being replaced by a live verification system, and a lapse will be spotted in seven days
2025 Ky. Acts ch. 39 (HB 390), effective June 27, 2025, rewrote KRS 186A.040 to require the Department of Vehicle Regulation to build an accessible online insurance verification system: operational and open to insurers by October 1, 2026, and accessible to courts, county clerks, prosecutors and law enforcement by January 1, 2027. Until then Kentucky runs on the old monthly reports, and an owner is notified only after the vehicle's VIN has been missing from the database for two consecutive reporting months. On and after January 1, 2027 the trigger becomes seven consecutive days. Either way the notice must state that the registration will be revoked unless proof of insurance reaches the county clerk or the department, or the system confirms coverage, within fourteen days after the date the insurance became invalid — a window the same Act cut from the thirty days the statute used to allow. The same Act extended the $40 registration reinstatement fee in KRS 186.040(8) to revocations under KRS 186A.040(5)(b) and earmarked the Cabinet's half of it for running the new system, and amended KRS 304.39-117 so that from January 1, 2027 the grace window for a newly acquired personal vehicle or a change of carriers shrinks from 45 days to 7.
2025 Ky. Acts ch. 39 (HB 390) — enrolled text, Legislative Research CommissionJune 27, 2025
Coverage lapseThe $40 registration reinstatement fee now reaches registrations revoked over an insurance lapse
2024 Ky. Acts ch. 123 (SB 199), section 23, created the fee on July 15, 2024: the owner of a vehicle whose registration has been canceled pays forty dollars ($40) to the county clerk, who keeps $20 and forwards $20 to the Transportation Cabinet. As written it covered only cancellations under KRS 186.040 itself. 2025 Ky. Acts ch. 39 (HB 390), section 5, effective June 27, 2025, extended it to a registration revoked under KRS 186A.040(5)(b) — the insurance-lapse revocation. Before 2024 a Kentucky owner who lost a registration over a lapse paid nothing administrative to get it back. The fee is separate from, and can be owed on top of, the $40 driver's license relicensing fee in KRS 186.531(8).
2025 Ky. Acts ch. 39 (HB 390), sec. 5 — enrolled text, Legislative Research CommissionJanuary 1, 2018
Minimum coverageThe property damage minimum went from $10,000 to $25,000 — Kentucky is 25/50/25, not 25/50/10
2017 Ky. Acts ch. 157 (SB 114), section 1, amended KRS 304.39-110(1)(a)1. to raise the required property damage liability limit from ten thousand dollars ($10,000) to twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000). Section 3 of the Act provided that the change applies to policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2018, so although the Act's effective date was June 29, 2017, the requirement reached drivers at renewal. The bodily injury limits (25/50) and the $60,000 single-limit alternative were untouched, and section 2 conformed the definition of proof of financial responsibility in KRS 187.290(11) by pointing it at the statute instead of restating the dollar figures. Comparison sites and older state guides that still list Kentucky as a 25/50/10 state are quoting a minimum that has been wrong for eight years.
2017 Ky. Acts ch. 157 (SB 114) — enrolled text, Legislative Research Commission
What this list does and does not cover
Recorded here: changes to the rules this site tracks for Kentucky — liability minimums, SR-22 and proof-of-insurance requirements, penalties for driving uninsured, the fault system, what a lapse costs, new-resident deadlines and crash reporting. Each entry names the session law or statute that made the change and the date it took effect, not the date it was signed.
Not recorded: rate filings, individual insurer decisions, court rulings that do not change the text of the law, and changes to rules outside those seven subjects. A short list does not mean a quiet legislature — it means little moved in the parts of Kentucky law a driver has to comply with.
A change that has passed but has not yet taken effect is not shown as current anywhere on this site. It sits on the Kentucky pages as a dated pending value and replaces the current figure on the morning it comes into force. You can see every pending change across the country at the top of the national change feed, and the sources behind the Kentucky figures on its statute index.