Starting A Home Daycare In New Jersey-Insurance?

[IHDiesel73L]

Hi everyone. My wife is interested in starting a daycare in our home. She is a teacher but due to budget cuts will not have a job next year so we're investigating this in trying to prepare for the future. As a bit of background, she has been a teacher for five years and has taught 6th to 12th grade, but during summers she has worked with K-5 children in daycare and summer camp settings. New Jersey has a fairly straightforward licensing process which I was able to find online, but insurance has been a challenge. I haven't even gotten to the point of finding business insurance yet, I can't even find a homeowner's insurance who would allow a home daycare period! My current homeowner's provider said that they would not be able to insure us if we provided daycare at our home whether or not we had a separate policy for daycare or not. I also checked with State Farm and they said no as well. Can anyone recommend a homeowner's provider that is home daycare friendly as well as a business insurance provider?

[Michael]

That is a common problem we hear of on the forum. Here are some earlier threads on insurance: http://www.daycare.com/forum/tags.php?tag=insurance

In my experience it is cheaper getting quotes online. Some of the bigger companies offer discounts when ordering online, because it is less work for them. But to be safe you could compare quotes online, pick the best offer and try a local agency to see if they can match it or do better.