I used to watch That 70s Show when I was younger and they often used dillhole as an obvious replacement for dickhead/dickhole. I liked it and use it instead of cursing for variety.
Three years of premiums for an under 21 year old male plus the increase in mom’s premium is likely going to exceed the blue book on the car.
Thanks!
How in the world can it be a cash grab when it was all her money to begin with? If you don’t like other people getting a windfall when your shit gets fucked up, buy your own legally required insurance! He pushed the burden onto her and is now cranky because she reaps the benefits and not him. Too bad, so sad. This is the price he pays for those three years of no insurance payments.
It sounds like there was an explicit or at least implicit arrangement where Ex (and Grandma) paid for the car while OP’s sister paid for insurance. If I were in a situation like this I’d expect that OP’s sister is paying the insurance for the benefit of their son, not her’s. Keeping hte money makes it seem like she is cashing in on a bet.
I wonder how much of this is your sister being bitter about being wrong. Son was responsible enough to not trash his new car. Given the severity of the accident and the lack of injury to Son sounds like the car did its job protecting him. Certainly much better than a “old beater” would have.
The car belonged to the kid. If he wants to do something with the wreckage (sell it for scrap, I presume), that’s his call.
The insurance belonged to the mom. Like everyone who ever buys insurance on anything, she bought it with the understanding that it might or might not ever pay off. It did. It’s her insurance, so it’s her money.
“Mom gets back what she paid on premiums” would only be a fair solution if she would also have gotten it back without the wreck. That wasn’t going to happen. It’s like the old joke scam of holding a raffle with a fake prize, and if the winners complain, refunding them the cost of their ticket.
Waitaminute. If that’s true, it’s all the kid’s money. If the car had not been insured by the mother, then the kid would have a claim against the other driver. By insuring his car, she’s essentially robbed him of that claim, through no fault of his own.
Whether or not she’s due the insurance premiums is a completely separate matter.
OK - so can you legally insure something that belongs to someone else? Not knowing how the car is titled (I’m going to guess that since the kid was presumably a minor it is joint between him and some adult (mom?)), but if it is in his name solely - would the money legally be his?
Morally, I think mom should take back her premiums and let the kid have the rest.
He can’t sell it for scrap - the insurance company will take possession of the wreck as part of the settlement - then they sell it for scrap.
That’s why I keep asking who has the title - the bank, the grandmother, the mother, the kid, who? If the grandmother or the kid have the title, they actually have a strong bargaining position, since IME the insurance company won’t pay out the insurance on a total loss until they get the title signed over to them.
This is what I think too.
I have had neither a child nor a divorce, but if I did I hope I wouldn’t prioritize the satisfaction of a “fuck you” to a hated former mother-in-law (and I do think that’s what this is), over the current best interests of my son. I wouldn’t think badly of her for not handing over the net proceeds immediately as long as she worked with him on a reasonable plan under which he could use them to replace his car (e.g. he demonstrates that he has saved sufficient money for a year’s insurance and maintenance). In my opinion, she missed an opportunity to teach him about adult responsibility when she paid his premiums in the first place, but perhaps it is not too late to start. I don’t admire her current path, at all.
Mom probably is just paying for liability insurance and not collision on the car.
Something doesn’t add up about the OPs story. You can’t register a car without insurance so kid must of had it at some point. So there had to have been some sort of arrangement at the time of purchase.
Actually, one does - at least in some states. Just went through this in GA last year. A woman hit me, totaled my car, her fault. My insurance company helped me through the process, but her insurance did the investigation, set the value, negotiated the settlement with me and cut the check. The whole process only took about a week.
And while we’re at it, since the wreck was not his fault and if the other insco is paying, the check should go to whomever was named on the title. Name on the title = ownership of the car. The paying insurance company will not send the check until they have a signed title.
Technically, if her name was not on the title Mom should not have been able to insure the car in the first place. One generally can’t insure what one doesn’t have an ownership interest in. It does happen, but it’s not SOP.
So much of this makes no sense. There is really critical data missing about who had title to the car, and how old the kid is. Also about where he lives now, although that’s less critical. I’m going to use what I know and make my best guess for the rest in my post below. If any of this critical info flops the other way, then some of the other assessments will change as well.
Three years ago the car was bought, kid would have been sixteen probably. Grandma’s gift would have had to have been legally titled under either Grandma or some other adult, probably mom. This may have been part of her objection, because legally it’s her liability. Grandma gets all the cool points with the kid for the great gift but if he gets it towed the city/state is coming after mom with impound fees and such. Bad Granny. Bad.
Since the car is legally mom’s, she doesn’t want it on the street without insurance, but doesn’t have the cojones to take the keys and say “you get them when I get cash to pay for insurance, and if those payments ever stop then the access to the keys does too.” Bad mom. Bad.
Now, three years pass, at some point he turns 18 and can have the car re-titled under his name. Judging from what happened with the insurance my guess is he didn’t want to bother with that either and left the responsibility on her. Bad kid. Bad.
Now the car is totaled, she has clear title, she has it insured. If my guesses are right then It was always her car, and it was always her insurance. Any thought of the car being “his” was a delusional fiction in granny and kid’s head which relied on mom continuing to be their doormat. Guess what? She can sign the remains over to be totaled without a damn thing from granny or kid. My guess is this is exactly what happened because there wasn’t a word said about a fight over signing over the title to mom so she could complete the insurance paperwork to have it totaled.
He’s fucked. His apathy towards getting the paperwork done to re-title the car and get his own insurance with him as the beneficiary has roundly kicked him in the balls. He left all the cards in her hands. My guess is he still lives at home too, and is happy to have mom still shoulder all the remaining expenses of his lifestyle. Frankly, if this is the situation, then he probably needs this wake up call.
Grandma’s fucked. She wanted to give a gift to someone who wasn’t legally able to receive it, so she essentially forced it on someone else. Her insistence on doing this when she did instead of waiting till he was 18 led her to take shortcuts with the legal realities and left all the cards in mom’s hands.
Now, mom’s not been an angel here. The situation where the kid “owned” the car was something she went along with and tacitly supported by defraying the legal responsibility/insurance obligations. She should have drawn this line a long time ago when the stakes were theoretical instead of practical. But playing the odds with the missing info, my guess is she’s got a ~19 year old who is happy to have her shoulder 90% of the cost of his lifestyle while he spends 90+% of his income on his own desires and contributes virtually nothing to the household.
If my assumptions about the rest of the situation are correct, then I’m on team mom here.
I think she should take what she’s spent on increased premiums since he’s been driving out of the insurance payment, then put the rest on account with a college and he can use it to go to school. Consider this his first lesson from the school of hard knocks and if he doesn’t want more then he better go to another school and start pulling his weight.
Enjoy,
Steven
Per my insurance company, any licensed driver in my household is required to be on my policy no matter their age, unless they have insurance through another company. If they are not on a separate vehicle, then they are included on mine and their driving records would be reflected in my rates. I have the insurance on both my 20 somethings vehicles - in their names- plus my 16 year old. (All male.) Technically I am insuring vehicles I do not own. They get much cheaper rates with my wife’s credit rating plus the multi vehicle discounts. The oldest repays me his cost. We carry the cost of the ones in school. Having multiple drivers and vehicles allows us to shuffle drivers around to get the cheapest rates. Added a beater car for the 16 year old last week and by shuffling drivers, we insured it for <$10 per month. My insurance did not change when my truck was totaled last spring by another driver. Her insurance treated me better than mine did when my eldest trashed my truck 6 years back. The OPs story looks similar to mine. Parent keeps insurance on kids vehicle as a cost of parenting. Plus if he lived with her, her insurance reflected the cost. It depends on the current living arrangements as to what she should do. ex-MIL is a non-entity in the discussion. Son’s insurance cost on future vehicle should not change if he was not at fault unless he invokes the under-insured claim. The mom’s insurability and cost should not be affected at all. Peace in her household and relationships are what she has to figure out the cost of.
Children retain ownership of gifts given to them specifically. This is an article about super heroes but the law is the same:
http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2012/01/06/minor-superheroes-and-property-ownership/
Even if OP’s sister does have the title the car legally belongs to the kid.
The second thing is that 16 year olds can’t get insurance by themselves. They are minors and minors can’t enter into contracts. So when kid got this car there had to have been an arrangement for insurance. The options would be on mom/dad’s policy, mom/dad cosign, or drive it illegally. I seriously doubt they chose with the drive illegally option. Like I said in my prior post, something doesn’t add up with OPs sister’s story.
OP’s sister’s position results in a net transfer of $5k+ to her (8-10k insurance settlement minus $500-$4000 insurance payments). Essentially using her son’s accident to rob money from him. You can wave any legal or moral argument you want, but there’s absolutely no way that OP’s sister should profit from her son’s accident. That’s ridiculous and obscene.
No, what’s ridiculous and obscene was the grandmother giving the teenager the car.
The mom paid the insurance, the payout is hers. You can kvetch all you want but the fact of the matter is that if the mother hadn’t taken the insurance on, the kid would be in a worse position than he is now.
Why is it obscene for grandma to give her grandson a car? She did so even though mom didn’t like it, but presumably dad (the ex) supported it. So why isn’t grandma allowed to do this without being the bad guy?
Again, if paying the insurance was gonna cause her this much resentment, it’s stupid she kept doing it without specifying that this came with major strings attached.
When I was a broke ass college student, my parents paid insurance on the car my sister and I shared. It wasn’t something knelt entitled to but they did it because they knew I was broke. They could has stopped payments at any time and I would have had shit to say about it. But they chose not to do that.
Well, one day the car was totaled because some guy ran a red light. My parents could have pocketed the insurance money but they didn’t. They used the money to buy another car for monstro and me. Because obviously they understood that by keeping the money, we woulnt have a car anymore which would suck. If the purpose for them keeping the money was to teach us some petty lesson about consequences, ya think we wouldn’t have right to bummed about that?
I’m right here with you. Regardless of who holds the title, the car was a gift to the son and as far as I can tell, everyone in the family understands that. So the son has a car, and thought no fault if his own, it’s destroyed. So how is it fair that the mother gets made whole in this situation when she lost nothing? I can see asking to get paid back for the premiums, and while I think that’s trying to retroactively solve a problem she created by taking on the insurance herself, I can still let it slide. Total cash grab.
And in the cases where I’be been hit and not at fault, the other insurance company has paid me directly and my rates have never gone up. In one case I now remember, a hit and run, my company paid me, and since I wasn’t at fault, my rates still didn’t go up.
The payout should go to the person whose name is on the check.
The time to negotiate anything different was before the accident. Both the child and the grandparent failed to do that, so it’s pretty rich that they want to swoop in after the fact with all kinds of ideas about what is fair.
If Mom is nice, she’ll give him enough to buy a beater. But the kid should consider this a valuable lesson in what happens when you don’t take change of your financial responsibilities.
Ridiculous and obscene is not what comes to mind when I hear Hyundai hatchback.
No, the liable party (person who hit son) should compensate the owner of the car (the son) for the damage they caused. It’s not clear exactly how Mom is getting hold of the money here, but she doesn’t have a real claim to it.
I think grandma can buy the kid anything she wants, what she doesn’t get to do is lay the responsibility for that gift on the mother.
Grandma can buy the kid a pony, but she can’t buy the kid a pony and then tell the mother she is responsible for the board, the vet, and the farrier, unless mom agreed grandma could buy the kid a pony.
Grandma can pay the tuition at a nice private school for the kid. She doesn’t get to tell the mom she has to drive the kid there and pick him up. Unless mom agreed to it, then it’s grandma’s responsibility to ferry the kid around.
I’ve known parents to enroll their kid in a private,expensive school and then call the ex and demand they pay half the tuition. Nope, you want the kid to go to the private school, your decision, you pay for it.
Same thing here. Grandma wanted the kid to have a nice car. Then grandma should have been paying the insurance and any other expenses.
As far as I’m concerned, grandma has no more to say in this. It’s between the mother and her son, she carried the insurance, it’s hers to do as she pleases.
If it were me, I wouldn’t keep the money, but I wouldn’t hand it over to the kid either. I’m sure not going to give it to grandma or the ex. What I do with it would be between me and my kid.
However, I wouldn’t be in this place to start with. I would have told grandma if she wants him to have the car so badly, she can pay for the insurance. Her gift is not going to be my responsibility.
She can take her manipulations elsewhere, I’m not playing the game.