The mother also failed to negotiate anything. If she didn’t want to pay the insurance, then she shouldn’t have. But she did, which is implied consent to the arrangement. She shouldn’t turn around and say she is “owed” anything unless she made it clear to begin with what she was/wasn’t agreeing to. The mother never put a dime toward the purchase of the car. She agreed (by doing it) to pay the insurance. At most, she should get the money back for the increase in her insurance since he’s been on the policy. Why should she get the money for a car that she didn’t buy and she agreed to insure?
If the car had been totaled a couple days after it was given, I wonder if people still would think mom was entitled to payout. Or would it be more obvious that she’s using her son’s misfortune as an excuse to enrich herself.
Apparently, the OP has run screaming from the room.
I’d be interested in hearing some more details.
$416/mo.
That’s the base price of a 2013 Hyundai Elantra hatchback divided by 36 months of insurance costs.
The insurance check would have been for the replacement value, not the MSRP when new.
Insuring a male teen in a new car is an expense I would not care to undertake.
I side with the mother.
You fucked up my life by giving the kid a car he couldn’t drive unless I paid the insurance.
You don’t get to tell me what to do with MY MONEY again.
Kid: buy what you can afford to acquire and operate legally. Welcome to the Adult World.
This… WHO has the title on this car? All options depend on this answer.
Yep, I’ll admit I’m sketchy on the details (though I know she was paying for full coverage) - all this started before I moved back to KY. The question of who holds title is interesting- my nephew was 16 when he got the car, and I know his grandmother paid cash for it, but how it was titled and exactly when my sister got stuck insuring make me wonder. It’s true that here you can’t drive a car off the lot without POI. With him a minor and her paying the insurance, the title may very well be in her name. I’d bet my nephew agreed to reimburse her for the insurance if she added him to her policy just to get it off the lot, and then balked when he learned how much it was (at 16 until just after he turned 19, he was working at McDonalds - the premiums were likely almost everything he made). And it being titled in her name would explain why she felt obligated to keep insuring it.
Her being stuck with the premiums on a car she didn’t want him to have in the first place, that would explain her attitude towards him and his grandma. And I suspect Grams was kinda sticking it to her, giving him a brand new car when his mom drove/drives a 2002 Focus wagon. Paying his premiums are probably why she’s still driving it.
Weirdly, my brother is firmly in the “give the nephew the money” camp, mostly because he’s the one my nephew whines to. I say weirdly because my first car was 12 years old when I was that age, and his was 10. My current truck is 17 years old, and his current car 15 year-old Camry. My other sister drives a 1 year-old Honda. Why’s the kid need a car nicer than half his relatives? He also thinks she should keep paying the insurance on whatever the nephew gets, and that sure as hell didn’t happen with us.
They live in Lexington, so the buses aren’t ideal, but he could totally get by with an old motorcycle or moped to get him to work and the UK campus where it would really help with parking). Apparently my not dying in about forty years of riding is a fluke, and him on two wheels would be instant death, so that’s out.
Nah - say she spent 4 grand on insurance on the car, and the payout is 10 grand, why should get 6 grand to keep when Grandma bought the car.
I agree with the others who say reimburse herself for the insurance and let the son get a beater with the difference. AND he pays his own damn insurance.
Because grandma and son didn’t think about the consequences of their actions so mom gets a 6 grand bonus for being the only one with their head not in the clouds/their ass.
The car had to be insured. If grandma didn’t want to take on that responsibility, she should have given him something that didn’t have legally required ongoing costs.
This sounds all sorts of fucked up. If I had a kid and those two cars, I’d take the old one and give em the new one. 12 years of safety improvement means the new car is a lot safer and I’d want my kid protected. Even if Grams were trying to stick it to Mom, it shouldn’t have worked. Mom should be happy for her Son and if she’s not, well, that says multitudes about her.
I think this assumes facts not in evidence. Divorced couples often split costs and certainly a reasonable way to do it would be Dad buys car and Mom pays insurance.
I also dispute your “the car had to be insured” argument. Or at least that it had to be insured by Mom. It’s not possible for son to get on her insurance without her consent. If she didn’t want to be on the hook for the insurance she shouldn’t have put him on the policy.
This is absolutely inaccurate as a matter of law.
Children can own property in the same way anyone can own property. “At common law an infant was ‘entitled to his own property rights and the enforcement of his own choses in action . . . including those in tort, and was liable in turn as an individual for his own torts.’ Prosser on Torts, 2 ed., Domestic Relations, | 101, p. 675,” (quoting Midkiff v. Midkiff, 201 Va. 829 at 831 (1960).
There are laws which allow gifts to minors to be given property for which they hold title but which is held in trust for them by a parent or guardian – that means that although the minor owns the property, he does not have control of it. Please note that even if you were referring to this, your statement is still wrong; the kids OWN the property in question. And this does not happen automatically – if I wanted to give your kid a car, but leave you the custodian until your kid is 18 (or 21 in some states), then I have to provide, in writing, that the title transfers to you as custodian for your kid under the Virginia Uniform Transfers to Minors Act. If I don’t, then your kid simply owns the car. Period.
Different states have different laws; some states automatically assign a guardian for certain types of property transfers and some require a specific designation.
But no state, so far as I am aware, simply removes the right to own property from minors.
If you have a citation to the contrary, please let me know.
Minors owning real property(i.e. a car) varies by state.
In Texas a minor may have their name on a title, and thereby own the vehicle. But because in Texas minors may set aside contracts the reality is that no one will sell a kid a car because they could then tear up the loan paperwork and the seller is screwed. Same deal with insurance contracts. Insurance signs up a under-18 year old and the kid decides they don’t want to be bound by the contract anymore then they can unilaterally break it. The net effect of this is that kids don’t own cars or have the ability to insure them even if they were somehow to get a clear title to one.
In Washington it is specifically ILLEGAL(a misdemeanor) to put a minor’s name on a car title. So Grandma could be fined for giving him a car.
Not sure about Kentucky.
Enjoy,
Steven
Generally mothers have this thing where even when their kids are making choices that they don’t approve of, they’re not willing to risk their kid getting hit with huge fines or bills because they got hurt in a car accident and didn’t have insurance.
Everyone says the mom is horrible for keeping her own money but she apparently gets no points for caring about the financial and physical wellbeing of her son should something bad happen.
The only possible scenario I see where she is not justified in having final say over the money is if dad or grandma offered to pay the insurance and she rebuffed them because she wanted more coverage or a lower deductible or just wanted to be the poor put-upon martyr.
She’s still the Mom and can forbid the Son from driving the car for any reason. If Son fails to maintain insurance the car gets confiscated until he does. Ultimately, the point is that this is not a situation where Mom can say “woe is me”. She had/has power and it’s on her if she didn’t use that to get an outcome she was comfortable with.
Because it’s not her money. The money is to compensate the owner of the car and she is not the rightful owner.
And she’s not caring about the financial and physical wellbeing of her son. She’s robbing him of the $10k or so he’s entitled to as compensation for the loss of his car. At this point, they’re both adults. If she doesn’t approve of his financial decisions then her sole recourse is to raise he objections and let him deal with the consequences. She doesn’t get to hold his money hostage to get him to do what she wants.
In looking at the son’s situation, I have to say I understand why him paying high-priced insurance on 16 year-old’s McDonald’s wages would be something he’d balk at. Almost all of his earnings would go to the upkeep of this “gift”, making it more of a white elephant than anything else.
It’s not uncommon for parents to pay insurance on their kids’ vehicles, so I’m not all that scandalized by the mere thought of this mother doing this. It sounds like she wasn’t thrilled that she’d have to pay more on insurance than she would’ve if he’d gotten the beater she preferred, which is understandable. But that seems a small price to pay for a free car that her son can use.
She doesn’t care? Bullshit.
If she didn’t care, she would not have paid the insurance in the first place. And where does he live? At 19, most likely RENT FREE at his mom’s house. Is he paying for food, electricity, internet access, all the other things he would have to pay if he was living on his own? If she didn’t care, she would have kicked him out at 18 and refused to pay for anything.
I just want to rescind anything I said pthread that suggests I know anything about the legal or insurance aspects of this situation. We don’t know how the car was titled, and I really don’t know the extent to which a 3d party can take out insurance on something they do not own.
But I AM fully qualified to say that the family dynamics are fucked up, and are going to remain so no matter what the mom does. 
Her choice of keeping the $ seems well aimed at pissing off the most people possible. So if that is her goal …
If it’s not her money, why is the check made out to her? He chose to take an incredibly stupid and irresponsible gamble- not to deal with car insurance. And his grandparents didn’t bother to come up with a plan for insurance, so they allowed that gamble to happen. That gamble could have easily left him financially ruined him before he even reached adulthood.
Mom, being a mom, chose to insulate him from that risk and took the responsibility he didn’t take. Unfortunately, his failure to take responsibility means he doesn’t get the benefits either. Too bad. When you entrust your financial responsibilities to someone else, you lose some of your autonomy.
Which is a valuable lesson- expensive stuff is expensive to maintain. If you can’t afford the upkeep, you can’t afford the item. Both the kid and his grandparents needed to come up with a plan for how to pay for insurance.
I find it odd that you left out the parents in this, as though they aren’t responsible for coming up with such plans when their own children are involved.
Forcing him to have insurance is caring about his financial well being. Robbing him of $10k is not.
As for the rest of your post, Mom providing those things doesn’t give her the right to seize money from her son. If she wants to make those benefits conditional on using the money to buy a less expensive car, that’s perfectly acceptable.
That isn’t clear. My speculation is that the title is in her name because her son was a minor when the car was bought. Legally, that makes who gets the check an interesting question. Morally, it doesn’t. In effect, Mom is scamming Grandma. She (speculating again) agreed to be the legal owner of the car while Son is the de facto owner. Mom is now going back on that agreement to pocket the ~$10k.