Q: Should the car insurance have provided me a car rental / paid for my car payments while my car is in the shop?

A: This is not a legal question but I will answer it as best I can from personal experience. When you purchase car insurance, car rental coverage is usually defined by duration and the amount payable per day. For example, 30 days at $50 per day. The duration is generally fixed at 30 days. The only variable I've seen is the amount payable per day. That said, when the damages were evaluated, you knew that the car would be in the shop for more than 30 days. At that time, you may have been able to negotiate with your insurance company that they remit $1500 (or whatever the amount of your benefit was) in a lump sum so that you could rent a car by the month or take a short-term lease. Another option would be to purchase or lease another new car. Your commitment may incentivize the dealer to provide you with a car to use in the interim or to simply accept your repaired vehicle as a trade-in when the work is completed. None of this is a legal discussion but six months is a very long time to repair car. To justify the expense of working on one vehicle for six months, it must have been a late-model, high-end vehicle or the damages would have totaled the car. The bottom line is that you are responsible for making the payments on the car and for keeping it insured. If you knew, in advance, that the vehicle would be in repair for six months, you should have change the insurance coverage on the vehicle to comprehensive only. That way, the car would be covered if it were destroyed by fire or the roof falling in but it was a terrible waste of money to insure the car for collision and liability when it couldn't be driven. Unless the car is classified as an "exotic" car (think Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, etc.), it is unimaginable that repairs could take six months without the car being totally demolished. You need to make detailed inquiry with the shop what is taking so long and when they expect to complete the work. When you get the car back, you will inevitably find things the shop missed. Make certain that your agreement with the shop includes that list of missed items or you will be responsible for that as well. Good luck.