When you buy your home you should spend the extra few thousand (?) dollars to get title insurance and a market value rider — even though you are not likely to ever file a title insurance claim.

Here’s why.

Title insurance is a great business — for the insurance company. It researches the history of ownership and liens on your property and then insures against any risks it doesn’t find and refuses to insure against any risks it does find. This way it will almost never have to pay any claims. Not bad, eh? Plus, if you get a mortgage, the lender will make you get another title insurance policy insuring the lender for the amount of its loan.

But why should you bother getting title insurance for yourself? Because almost never is not never. No matter how small the likelihood that you will have a claim, the only claim you might ever have is likely to threaten the ownership of your home.

And when or if that time ever comes, you want to have paid for the market value rider so that you get the fair market value of your home, not just what you paid for it. By the time you make a claim, if you ever do, it will be too late to buy the market value rider. So get it when you buy your home — and your title insurance.