OK, I don’t know nothing about cars: I am a third party for a car sale (from one friend to another) and am wondering that since the car has a number of tickets associated with it (parking, failure to renew license, etc.) and is likely to be booted some day, probably the next time a traffic cop with a networked set-up walks by. If the car is transferred, does the responsibility for paying the tickets move to the new owner, or does it stay with the previous owner? When the car is bought, would the new owner get new plates and therefore a clean record? Are the tickets an impediment to selling the car? My guess is that the tickets remain the responsibility of the current title holder and that the other buyer would get new plates.
The current title holder is in Chicago, while the buyer is from the suburbs, but the car will be most often driven in Chicago. Now that I think about it, the cross-municipal transasction will likely clear the record, but I recall several other cars that have been bought by friends that kept the same license plate. This question’s probably a lot easier than I think it is.
IANAL, but the onus of all of the violations rests on the owner, not on the car. Once title is transferred, there should be no problem. There should be no problem with the transfer of title, although it is possible that the DMV would refuse to issue clear title until the tickets are paid by the guy who ran them up. The new owner can request new plates if he wishes. This would probably be a good thing in this instance.
Moving violations are written against drivers, not against cars. I dunno about parking tickets but I am pretty sure that you (and not the car) bear the responsibility.
I know that in California, when you sell a car you’re supposed to fill out a form that basically says “This car is no longer mine, and I take no financial or legal responsibility for it.” I think that has to do with insurance, though, not tickets.
Some aspects vary from state to state. In my state, if the previous owner didn’t pay registration fees (which include an ad valorem tax), then the new owner can’t get plates until he coughs up the missing dough. This happened to a friend of mine who bought the car in another state but it hadn’t been registered there, so our state considered it an unregistered car in our state. Doubled the cost of the car.
Hmmm, I suppose I’ll have to call the DMV, or at least turn responsibility over to the buyer. Man, I have no idea how many tickets are on that thing, this could get ugly.
