Legal ownership : prior sale

So say you sold an old car via Craigslist. Cash transaction, no bill of sale, and you sign off on the title. Car drives away.

A few months later you get a letter in the mail from a city tow yard, car is titled in your name so they identify you as owner per state recorx (buyer never transferred title) and you need to pay $XXX for towing and storage and to come get your car

What do you do? Do you still "own" it?

Yep.

should have kept a copy of the bill of sale.

There was no bill of sale.

For the record this is not my own doing. A friend let me know he'll be in my town over the weekend picking up his old car. After hearing the scenario, it didn't sit right with me.

What happens if the "buyer" shows up with the title you signed off on, or just takes it into the SoS and completes the transfer?

Afraid so. Most governments treat new cars as "major assets" (like a house) rather than cars. Since that's the only system they have, old cars get subjected to the same bureaucracy. IMO, that's why titles can be such a headache in the first place.

I don't know what happens to your public record or your credit history if you just let the city sell it at auction, though.

Pick it up, apply for duplicate title. Sell again.

If you're a nice guy, you make an attempt or two to contact the guy that "bought" it and offer it to him again for the cost of getting it out of impound, this time writing up a bill of sale and making a trip down to the BMV to prove to them that you no longer own the car.

If he doesn't bite, sell it again.

This is Washington state has a portion of the title the seller brings to the DOL to report the sale.

Happened to me once with a motorcycle sold to a family member. Got a trailer, paid the fees and brought it home. Wrecked, of course. I was concerned about having a lein or other bad mark on my credit.

I had this happen to me; I made him sign the title also and had given him a bill of sale and had him sign a bill of sale for me. Overkill but he wrecked it and left it wih no plates and he had never transferred the title so they tried to come after me for damages. I'm lucky they caught him because even all of that wouldn't have saved me.

As much of a pain as it is Ohio has the right idea making all titles be notarized at sale; I always make a copy now after the notary stamps it.

A few years ago it was made state law in MI that you copy and keep record of the title when you sell a car. Just to prevent this sort of thing.

This happened to me years ago and I couldn't afford to get that car out at the time. I ended getting a bill for $1200 from the tow lot and that ended up in collections.

i got a car back like this once... 92 Caprice 9C1 that i sold to a friend.. he said that he transferred the title the week after he got it from me... about a year later i get a letter from an impound yard telling me to come get my car.. so i call- my friend sold it to an illegal immigrant that he worked with, who in turn got a DWI in it.. also, there was no insurance on it and the tabs were expired... so i went to my insurance agent and got an insurance card and got it that friday... the title was in the glovebox, just as i had given it to my friend. it also had his name all over it...

so anyways, i got my car back for $135 in impound fees and drove it home... it was fun digging thru the junk in the car- those Mexicans have some interesting stuff... i got a few cheap tool sets, 2 toddler size car seats, and a trunk full of clothes and pictures..

i gave my friend a call the next day to make sure he had transferred it- i lied and said that i got a tab renewal card in the mail.. he said "yeah, i transferred it... then i sold it and the guy also transferred it".. then i told him what happened and the phone got really quiet... i told him i wasn't mad, but that his ass would have been on the line if the cops had knocked down my door because the car was involved in a robbery or something..

i threw the old title away and filed for a lost title on it and got new tabs for it. drove it a little bit here and there, and wound up parting it out about a month later and having the shell hauled to the junkyard and the motor and trans wound up in my 74 Monte Carlo..

What are these tabs that keep expiring?

nicksta43 wrote: What are these tabs that keep expiring?

You dont have to annually pay taxes on your car, on your birthday, and receive a little sticker to add to the license plate saying you did so?

Oh TAGS... now I get it

xflowgolf wrote: There was no bill of sale.

Then you're a dumbass.

Kenny_McCormic wrote:

nicksta43 wrote: What are these tabs that keep expiring?

You dont have to annually pay taxes on your car, on your birthday, and receive a little sticker to add to the license plate saying you did so?

NJ had those.. but people couldn't figure it out that they had to put them in the little square area of the plate designed for them. Some plates were covered in stickers.. so they quietly got rid of them for all but commercial vehicles

nicksta43 wrote: What are these tabs that keep expiring?

it's a Minnesota thing.. like tater tot hotdish..

you wouldn't understand..

When I read these discussions, I feel like each of the 50 states' lawmakers worked really hard to make entirely certain that their titling/registration procedures and fees were entirely different from the other 49.

EvanR wrote: When I read these discussions, I feel like each of the 50 states' lawmakers worked really hard to make entirely certain that their titling/registration procedures and fees were entirely different from the other 49.

i've come to the conclusion that MN has some of the most straight forward and common sense vehicle registration laws.. i just get confused when i see someone posting about safety and emissions inspections and worrying about finding a notary on a sunday afternoon so they can buy a car or some oddball thing like that..

I always keep a bill of sale. There have been times I'm glad I did, like one time I got a call from the cops at 9 PM saying they'd found a motorcycle previously registered to me on the side of the road with no sign of the rider. I was able to give them a name and contact info for the kid who bought it. Although to this day I have no idea what happened to him or if he was all right.

They didn't say if the bike had been found rubber side up or down.

Tell the towing company thank you for finding your stolen car.....

CA titles have a release of liability on the bottom of the title. When you sell the car and hand the title over, you tear off the release and send it in. I always make a copy of that release before I send it to the DMV. Twice I have received tickets in the mail for a car I previously sold, but the new owner didn't register. All I had to do was send them a copy of the release of liability and I was cleared.

I dont know how many times I have gotten this call but why would you sell a car to someone and let them drive off in license plates issued in your name. You are just inviting them to drive it until the tags expire and without insurance. Typically, there are no legal ramifications other than the tow/seizure/storage bill but you put yourself at real risk. Yank the tags so at least he has to put someone's else tag on the car; hopefully he will go and register the car. YMMV