PIP & Med-Pay rules in Arkansas

If a crash left you with medical bills before anyone has sorted out fault, the coverage that pays first in Arkansas is your own. Arkansas is an add-on state, so first-party medical and disability benefits sit on top of the regular at-fault system rather than replacing it. You can collect from your own policy right away and still go after the driver who hit you.

This is what Arkansas law actually requires, what the dollar figures are, and where the fine print bites.

What every Arkansas auto policy has to offer

Arkansas doesn't require you to carry personal injury protection. It does require your insurer to put it on the table. Under Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-202, every private-passenger auto policy issued in the state must provide three first-party benefits, paid without regard to fault, unless you turn them down.¹

The first is medical and hospital benefits: all reasonable and necessary expenses for medical, hospital, nursing, dental, surgical, ambulance, prosthetic, and funeral services, up to an aggregate of $5,000 per person. The detail that trips people up is the clock. Only expenses incurred within 24 months of the accident count.¹

The second is income-disability, meaning lost wages. If your injuries keep you from working, the policy pays 70% of your lost income, starting on the eighth day after the accident and running for up to 52 weeks, capped at $140 per week. If you weren't an income earner (a homemaker, for instance), the benefit instead covers the cost of hiring someone to do the work you can't, up to $70 per week.¹

The third is an accidental death benefit of $5,000, paid to the personal representative of the insured if the person dies from the accident within one year.¹

Those are the statutory minimums. Nothing stops an insurer from selling you more, and § 23-89-201 specifically allows broader coverage.² The Arkansas Insurance Department lays out the same three-part structure in its consumer auto guide.³

Optional, but you have to reject it in writing

Because the coverage is mandatory to offer and not mandatory to buy, Arkansas built in a paper trail. Section 23-89-203 gives the named insured the right to reject, in writing, all or any one of the § 23-89-202 coverages.⁴ So you can keep medical benefits and drop wage loss, or waive the whole package. If you never signed a rejection, there's a strong argument the coverage is on your policy whether you remember buying it or not.

One quirk works against you over time. Once you reject the coverage, the insurer doesn't have to remind you it exists on any renewal, reinstatement, or replacement policy.⁴ A waiver you signed years ago quietly follows you forward. If you aren't sure what you have, pull your declarations page and read it.

PIP and Med-Pay are not the same thing here

People use "PIP" and "Med-Pay" loosely, and in Arkansas they overlap without being identical. The full § 23-89-202 package (medical, wage loss, death) is what most people call PIP. Medical payments coverage, or Med-Pay, is the medical slice on its own, without the wage-loss and death components. Both pay regardless of fault, and both let you start using benefits while you're still treating, before any settlement with the other driver.³

The practical point: check which one you actually bought. A Med-Pay-only policy will cover your ER visit but won't replace a paycheck.

You still get to sue the at-fault driver

This is where Arkansas parts ways with true no-fault states. Section 23-89-206 says tort liability arising from the use of a motor vehicle "is retained."⁵ There's no injury threshold you have to clear first and no cap on suing for pain and suffering. PIP pays your early bills; the at-fault driver, through their liability insurer, still owes you for the full harm they caused.

That matters because Arkansas minimum liability limits are low, 25/50/25 ($25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, $25,000 for property damage) under § 27-22-104.⁶ A serious injury can blow past $25,000 fast. Your recovery can also shrink under Arkansas's modified comparative fault rule if you were partly to blame, and it disappears entirely only when your share of fault is 50% or more (§ 16-64-122).⁷ If the other driver is uninsured or underinsured, the UM and UIM coverage your insurer also had to offer you (and that you could likewise reject in writing) is what fills the gap (§§ 23-89-403, 23-89-209).⁸ If you need help sorting out who pays what, you can find an attorney through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

When your insurer has to pay, and what stalling costs them

PIP is supposed to be fast money. Section 23-89-208 makes first-party benefits overdue if they aren't paid within 30 days after the insurer receives reasonable proof of the amount owed.⁹ If the insurer makes you sue to collect, the statute lets you recover the overdue benefits plus a 12% penalty, interest from the date they came due, and a reasonable attorney's fee.⁹ That penalty is the lever that gets legitimate PIP bills paid without a drawn-out fight.

Keep your proof clean: itemized medical bills, records tying the treatment to the crash, and wage documentation from your employer if you're claiming lost income. The 30-day clock starts when the insurer has that proof in hand.

Paying it back out of your settlement

Here's the part injured people rarely see coming. If your PIP insurer paid your medical or wage-loss benefits and you later recover from the at-fault driver, the insurer gets some of that money back. Section 23-89-207 gives it a right of reimbursement and a lien on your tort recovery, up to the amount it paid, "less the cost of collection."¹⁰

Two details soften it. The reimbursement right reaches only the medical benefits and income-disability benefits (the § 23-89-202(1) and (2) categories), and it does not touch the accidental death benefit.¹⁰ The cost of collection, meaning the attorney's fee that produced the recovery, is shared, so the insurer doesn't get a full dollar-for-dollar refund off your lawyer's work.¹⁰ The statute also bars the at-fault insurer from making a single joint check to you and your PIP carrier a condition of settling.¹⁰

When benefits can be denied

The exclusions are narrow. Under § 23-89-205, an insurer can deny first-party benefits to someone who intentionally injured himself, or who was hurt while committing a felony or while trying to elude or resist a lawful arrest.¹¹ Being at fault for the crash is not on that list. PIP pays even if the wreck was your fault, which is the entire point of first-party coverage.

A few things to line up

Arkansas gives you three years to file a personal-injury lawsuit from a car crash (§ 16-56-105), so the tort side isn't as time-pressured as your PIP proof-of-loss deadlines.¹² Even so, the sooner you gather records, the smoother both claims go. If your car lost value beyond the repair bill, that's a separate claim against the at-fault insurer; see diminished value in Arkansas. And if you need the official crash report to document the wreck, start with Arkansas crash reports.

This is general information about Arkansas law, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-202 (Required first party coverage). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-202/

2. Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-201 (Broader-than-minimum benefits not prohibited). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-201/

3. Arkansas Insurance Department, Automobile Insurance consumer guide (2025). https://insurance.arkansas.gov/site/assets/files/2536/auto_2025.pdf

4. Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-203 (Rejection of coverage). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-203/

5. Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-206 (Retention of tort liability). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-206/

6. Ark. Code Ann. § 27-22-104 (Minimum motor vehicle liability limits). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-27/subtitle-2/chapter-22/subchapter-1/section-27-22-104/

7. Ark. Code Ann. § 16-64-122 (Comparative fault). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-64/section-16-64-122/

8. Ark. Code Ann. §§ 23-89-403, 23-89-209 (Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-4/section-23-89-403/

9. Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-208 (Payment of benefits; overdue benefits). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-208/

10. Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-207 (Insurer's right of reimbursement). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-207/

11. Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-205 (Exclusion of benefits). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-205/

12. Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105 (Statute of limitations). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-56/subchapter-1/section-16-56-105/