My daughter will be heading to USC this fall for grad school, and I plan to let her take our old car. The best I can determine, as long as she doesn’t plan to move to California permanently, and doesn’t get a job there, we aren’t legally required to register the car in California. But I also know that California is pretty vigilant about out of state cars, and that there is even a method for people to turn in out of state cars that should be registered there. Does anybody have any experience with this? We want to be legal, but we also want to avoid hassle if cars that don’t technically have to be registered get towed or ticketed. Thanks.
I would suggest you look at the California DMV website to see what the requirements are.
The DMV page isn’t entirely clear, but my understanding is that you can have a car that is not registered in California if you are a non-resident, and if you aren’t employed there. What I’m mainly curious about is if she’ll be constantly dealing with authorities who think her car is required to be registered there, even if it isn’t.
She might get stopped but if she’s around the campus they probably won’t bother… and if her driver’s license, car registration and tags match there will be no problems. My kids never registered their car to the state they were in when they were in college. The oldest stayed in that state and took a job after college…at that point he switched his drivers, license, registration and tags.
@Hunt - will she have an off street parking space where she is living or will she constantly be dealing with parking on the street? I only ask this since when my D lived in LA last summer for an internship near UCLA parking was a huge hassle. She had a garage space with her sublet, but the street her apartment building was on had “street sweeping” two days a week so people had to move their cars or be ticketed. D never saw a street sweeper come down her street the entire summer she lived there, but she saw plenty of people get tickets on their cars.
She doesn’t know where she’s going to live yet, but she hopes to find off-street parking.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_content_en/dmv/pubs/brochures/howto/htvr33
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/newtoca/newtoca
Note that the first link indicates that you are a resident for DMV purposes if “Property is leased for use as a residence” in California. Also, employment can include TA and RA jobs that graduate students commonly do.
ucbalumnus, I read those pages, and they seem contradictory to me. It says you’re a resident if you are paying resident tuition. That sure seems to imply that if you’re a nonresident student, you’re not a resident. Can it really be the case that if you’re paying rent to live there as a nonresident student, that alone makes you a resident? Also, there’s the bit about the car being used in California for most of the registration term. That won’t be true for 2017, because school doesn’t start until the year is more than half over, but maybe it will be the case for 2018.
Maybe USC will provide some more guidance on this when she signs up for the parking lottery for campus parking.
Let me just emphasize that if it becomes clear that we have to register the car in California, we’ll do so, or perhaps buy a used car out there.
I read that list as meaning that you are a resident for DMV purposes if any of the items in the list is true, not if all of the items are true. Indeed, it is impossible for all of them to be true, since one cannot have the homeowner’s property tax exemption (for owner occupied property) and the leased property for residence at the same time. Also, many of these things are inapplicable to many people (since USC is a private school, the resident tuition at public schools is inapplicable to a student at USC, as well as being inapplicable to a non-student).
Also, remember that, in basic logic, A->B does not necessarily mean the !A->!B. (A = paying resident tuition at state university, B = resident for DMV purposes)
I know it’s too much to ask, but if they really mean that any college or graduate student who is living in California to go to school must register their car in California, why not say that?
I guess I’ll have to look at the actual law as well. There’s really no reason to assume that the DMV webpage reflects it perfectly.
Here is the California vehicle code:
Definitely check with USC. If you have to change YOUR car registration when you don’t even live there… If she is getting a stipend from USC she will be employed in CA. Perhaps giving her the car once she moves and registers it there. Or the option of her getting a CA car. Don’t forget there are special CA emissions rules and tests. Perhaps one reason they are so particular- otherwise the potential for too many cars not in compliance with anti pollution regs.
So, the statute is different from what’s on the DMV site. Essentially, you have to register your car if you are a resident. There are various things that create either evidence or a rebuttable presumption that you are a resident–but typically a full-time student who is a resident of another state would not be considered a state resident unless he or she takes steps to become a resident. So I feel fairly comfortable in saying that my daughter would not be required to register the car until she takes steps to become a permanent resident of California.
But it still might make sense from a hassle point of view to register the car there if she’s going to get tickets that she’d have to fight, etc.
- How long is her USC graduate program? I would not want to have to argue that a PhD student at USC who lives off campus in Los Angeles and TAs at USC is not a California resident. Someone in a 9-month MA program is a different kettle of fish.
- If you decide that she's going to have to register her car in California, it may be easier to sell the old car here and buy a used car there. It may be really expensive to bring an OOS car into compliance with emissions standards in California.
- Check with your insurance broker, too. You are not going to be happy if there's an accident and your insurer denies coverage because the car has been moved to California.
Thanks, JHS. It’s a two-year MFA. Buying a car out there is an option. The insurer has not given problems before when the car has been out of state for months, but they may raise rates if she is going to be the principal driver for a longer period.
If you feel like initiating an interesting case-law scenario…
If the state would not permit you to claim residency for tuition purposes (I know USC is private, but the rules must be same), but expects you to claim residency for DMV, they would likely lose in federal court as the state cannot justly have two different standards for residency. Of course, it would have to go to SCOTUS, because we have corrupt system for circuit courts that lands local cronies in judicial robes with little or no vetting. So the 9th circuit is filled with Californians who typically side with state government over other entities or individuals.
Actually, the residency requirements aren’t different–it’s just that you have to be a resident for a year to get in-state tuition, and you have to register your car within 10 (or maybe it’s 20) days of becoming a resident. I don’t think there’s a federal case in that, at least not one I’m willing to fund.
If you are a resident for one day, you have to file a part-year tax return and pay taxes accordingly. There is no rule that all rules involving residency have to be completely consistent with one another. No one is going to win a constitutional case on that basis.
Two-year MFA in what? Filmmaking? Screenwriting? She’s a California resident!
Screenwriting, but she’s interested in TV so she may end up in New York (where she’s interning now).
Residency is a funny concept, because it’s partly a mental state–the place you intend to be your permanent residence.