So D2 is heading off to grad school in another state, and I am planning to give her my old Subaru (over 150K miles on it). I’m kind of clueless about a few things:
I’d put it in her name to protect your liabiilty
Another issue is registration. Registration costs are different in different states. It may be beneficial to leave the car registered at home, or it may make more sense to register in the new state. Some states have inspection requirements that might entail some leg work or even repairs. In some states you have to return the car to the state where it’s registered (maybe for inspection) in order to keep it registered in that state. Maybe your state would require that if you left it registered in your state. Usually you have to register in the new state eventually.
You’ll probably get a better insurance rate if you continue to own it and insure it with your car, just listing her as a driver. It really depends on where you live and where she lives. Some states (Florida) are pretty expensive to register the car the first time but then after that it goes down.
Call your insurer and ask. Usually they are pretty helpful in telling you the best options.
D had our car for years in RI. We owned it and she stayed on our insurance.
She moved to MA and she was required to register it there as well as get insurance that
covered MA. We sold it to her officially for $5.
In order to register it in another state, your daughter would most likely need to get a driver’s license in that state and declare residency. Is that something she is planning on doing?
You can give $14k gift to anyone - anyone! - once a year without having to file a gift tax return. Add your spouse’s 14k, and that is a nice car. When we gave the previous car to big kiddo, we wrote “gift” - no one asked a Q.
MA was very strict. In addition, my son couldn’t get a local sticker to park on street without registering in that state. . On the whole, but mthink it gives peace talks f mind to have the grad student own the car,mtitle and all
While DD had a car out of state for college, it was registered in our names and state; insurer wanted notification of when the car was where. Additionally, there was an uptick in premiums for the second location. May be worth looking into as part of the decision.
In our state you can forgo the yearly inspection that is required for the registration tag each year by simply stating car is out of state with kid at college. No paperwork necessary. Though when car crosses back into the state you have three days to get inspection. This has worked to keep car on our insurance throughout undergraduate and grad school. Check if that is the same in your state.
Ultimately keeping kids under our insurance has been much cheaper.
Another reason to register it in your child’s name- If your child accrues any parking tickets or speeding/toll violations via camera they’ll go under their name, not yours.
We gave our DS our old Subaru to use while he was in grad school. Since he was NOT changing his driver’s license, or anything else…we kept the registration in our name, and also the ownership.
We contacted our insurance company and they were fine being told a college grad student wpuld be using the car out of state…for school. So…call your car insurance company…and see if they are OK with the car being garaged elsewhere.
When the kid graduated…WE sold that car,
Echoing exactly what bookworm said, so check requirements in state where your kid is moving. We sold car to him for $1.
We couldn’t even keep car insured by our ins co because they don’t write in MA.
He didn’t get a MA license for over a year because he was lazy. It didn’t matter at all that he had a NYS license to register the car or get resident parking sticker (required in MA to park on street.)
When my oldest headed off to WI from PA after graduating she had no permanent job for two years and worked as a substitute teacher. We subsidized her by keeping car in our name and helping with medical costs until the ACA kicked in a year later. With no real job we weren’t sure how long she’d stay before having to come home.
All was fine until at the end of those two years her then fiancée was driving the car and totaled it. Our insurance company was not too happy. And of course our rates were increased. And one driver involved in the accident tried to sue us as owner of the car.
In a crazy way it worked for us because my husband had been fired and lost his professional credentials. Kid was moving to Alaska and we had no way to afford going to WI to sign over the car as a donation or to sell as a junker. What insurance paid out for it covered a quarter of COBRA for our health insurance. We had to declare bankruptcy cause of kids high medical bills on our credit card and named the person who tried to sue, which protected our house.
Second kid got her own car insurance the first day she moved out of state. Car we helped her but while in college was titled in her name from the get go.
After going around in circles a couple times when this came up we put the car in kid’s name for liability reasons. Even though the insurance cost increased it was worth it if anything major happened.
When our kids took a car to college/grad school we knew it was temporary. We did not gift the car to them rather they used it for a period while in school. We kept the car in our name and under our insurance.
We gifted each an old car in their SR year of college and shipped by boat HI to CA. We retitled one it in each of their names. The insurance was higher but tickets and accidents only affect their premiums, not ours. Our insurer doesn’t write any policies outside HI.
Is the car going to California? I ask because the state has strict emissions standards, even for cars being brought in from out of state. Our family car would not have passed the test to be retitled and reregistered there.
Read about negligent entrustment and vicarious liability.
The car is going to Iowa from Washington. I don’t expect that it will ever come back.