Vehicle registration

What it means

The two documents do different jobs and are constantly confused. The title records who owns the vehicle; it is issued once and reissued only when ownership changes. The registration records permission to drive it on public roads; it expires, it is renewed, and it carries the plates and the road tax.

A vehicle can hold one without the other. A car in a garage can be titled and unregistered. A leased car is registered to the driver and titled to the leasing company. After a death, a vehicle usually needs both dealt with, and by different routes: the title through the state's deceased-owner procedure, the registration by transfer, renewal or surrender.

The registration also carries the insurance requirement in most states, which is why leaving it running on a vehicle nobody is insuring generates penalties on an estate that has stopped paying attention.

Why it matters

Families ask how to transfer "the registration" when they mean the title, and are given the wrong procedure and the wrong form.

The registration is also the record that generates post — renewals, tolls, citations — so leaving it in a dead person's name keeps the estate connected to a vehicle it no longer has.

When you are likely to meet it

• When a renewal notice arrives after the death.
• When a titling agency asks which of the two is being applied for.
• When a vehicle is being kept off the road rather than sold.

Title and registration

Two documents, two jobs. Nearly every question about a vehicle after a death is really about one or the other.

A vehicle nobody intends to drive still needs its title dealt with, and a vehicle somebody is driving still needs its registration current. They are separate jobs at the same counter.

How this varies by state

Renewal periods, whether the registration transfers with the vehicle, and what a surviving family must do with it are set by each state.

Related terms

• Certificate of titleThe state-issued document that proves who owns a vehicle — and whose issuing state decides the procedure after a death.
• Electronic titleA title a state holds as a record rather than as a piece of paper. Nothing arrives in the post, and there is nothing in the drawer to find.
• License plate transferWhat happens to the plates when a vehicle changes hands — which depends on whether the state ties them to the car or the owner.
• Motor vehicle agencyThe state office that issues titles and registrations. It goes by a different name and a different set of initials in almost every state.
• Title applicationThe form that asks a state to issue a certificate of title in a new name. It is the central document in almost every vehicle transfer.
• Vehicle insurance after a deathThe policy does not simply continue. Canceling it before the title moves is the expensive mistake.
• Vehicle transfer taxes and feesWhat a state charges to put a title into a new name — a title fee, a transfer fee, and sometimes a tax on the value of the vehicle.

Sahvelo guidance that uses this

• Vehicle title transfer