Laurence and Lazy: let me explain what I meant, and let me dispel some misinformation. First, there is no list for plaintiff's attorneys to find out who has an umbrella policy. That is ridiculous, the insurance companies don't make their list of insureds public information. Second, even if an attorney were to somehow find out that you have an umbrella, it's meaningless information unless you do something to create liability, ie., cause a serious motor vehicle accident. The mere presence of insurance means nothing without liability.
As far as my statement, I did not mean that having umbrella coverage or high liability limits somehow makes you a target, or an "attraction" for lawsuits in the abstract. That is simply not true. What I meant was, in the event you did have an accident or do something which may cause you to be liable to someone else, and in that event, and only in that event, if the injured party gets a lawyer and the lawyer finds out that you have very high liability coverage, it then becomes more likely, not less likely, that you will be sued. Because if you had say a 10k policy, it is likely that the insurance company will simply offer the limits and the plaintiff's attorney will settle, knowing that it is unlikely he or she will ever collect any money from you. However, if you have a 500k policy, it is unlikely the insurance company will readily agree to pay such high limits without you first being sued, and the plaintiff's attorney going through the litigation process and setting up the real possibility that you will lose at trial. Only then (in my experience) will insurance companies agree to pay a large settlement on the eve of an impending trial. Of course this is after you have gone through 2 plus years of litigation because the insurance company doesn't want to pay it's high limits. Ironically, if you had low limits, the case may have settled without a lawsuit being filed.
Some of this may not be intuitive if you are not familiar with the insurance defense litigation system. Also, I freely admit that if you have substantial non-exempt assets, you should get high enough liability limits so that you feel comfortable, even though the chances of needing such high limits, in my experience, is very remote.
In my experience, in Florida (a very debtor protective state) it is the extremely rare situation where someone has any significant non-exempt assets such that the plaintiff's attorney wants to try and collect against the individual defendant. 99.5 percent of the time, it's the policy coverage limits that control.