<p>I asked this question on the other thread about cars for freshman, but it really wasn’t relevant to the topic and no one responded. I hope someone who has some experience with this question will give me some information here:</p>
<p>My son will be a senior in college this year (in California) and we live in Pennsylvania. He may buy a used car with his summer earnings when he goes back to school. How would insurance be handled in this case? I assume the car (purchased in California) would be registered in California. Could it go under our insurance? Can someone 21 years old get their own insurance? Would he still be under our insurance for our cars here at home? A friend of mine told me his son who is a grad student a Penn State could not get his own insurance at age 24. Does anyone have experience with this? Thanks.</p>
<p>From my experience…that is the best I can tell you. Regardless of where the car is purchased you can insure the car. My considerations were thus: value of car and consideration of coverage ie. collision/liability. The best arrangement for me is to keep my coverage as a part of my folks policy. I don’t know if you carry an umbrella for liability but perhaps you need to inquire. As for whether your son can buy insurance??? sure but it will likely cost more. I don’t know how you plan to title the car but that is also a consideration. Remember that insurance is purchasing a risk product…you can buy whatever you need or buy the least…from your discussion one cannot tell whether your son has assets.</p>
<p>Who will own the car? Interestingly, when we gave our grad school S (still under age 25) our old car, we found that the insurance rates for the state he’s in (WI) were lower for him personally than if we kept the car as a third car (registered in WA) on our existing policy with him as principal driver. Insurance agent advised that we could go either way, registering it in WI or WA and still keep on our policy, but that WA rates would apply. WI does not have mandatory insurance requirements, which I think is nuts. So we drove the car out there, gifted it to him, filled out minimal DMV forms to transfer ownership and register in WI, and it’s his. He got a great rate from State Farm. Plus, WI auto registration rates are less than WA.</p>
<p>I hadn’t thought about who would own the car - I assume he would. If we wanted to own it if it is advantageous as far as insurance, would we have to physically go to California? Can we own a car registered in California if we live in another state?</p>
<p>I asked many of the same things of our insurance agent. It all came down to the insurance rates between the states and ownership. In our case the cheapest was him owning the car, resigistering it in WI, and insuring it himself with reasonable limits, given the car’s value and his minimal “poor-student” assets. We also felt better about him owning the car outright since our assets would not be in play should he drive through a house or something. If he had a liability issue that wasn’t covered, I suppose all he’d lose would be his laptop and his ratty living room couch.</p>