If you move out of state, many states suggest just recycle your old plates, since the numbers are not going to be reissued anyway. Other states are like total control freaks (mine being one of them), where they will screw with your insurance, etc, if you do not surrender them within X days of moving. I have to assume that using expired plates for fraudulent purposes is not a really big problem (though doubtless it occurs).
So, assuming I’m correct about fraud being a low level concern, can anyone clue me in as to why there should be such differing rules between the states?
I thought licence plate numbers were re-used? If someone returns their plate and the number is no longer associated with a particular vehicle, then the plate number could be re-issued to a new car, no? If the plate isn’t returned, though, that does perhaps open up the hypothetical possibility of fraudulent use of the old plate. This may have been easier to do before computerization; it’s much easier now for an officer to check if a plate matches a car or not.
My jurisdiction doesn’t use registration/expiry stickers, so you can’t tell just by looking at it whether or not a plate is valid.
I suspect fraudulent out of state use is easier to get away with than in state use. Are DMV records from other states readily accessible? My CT plates are non-expiring We used to get stickers to put on them to update, then we got windshield stickers, now I have nothing but a form in the glove compartment. Were I to move to FL and drive around for 5 years, would anyone ever know I’d not renewed?
Actually, New York requires you to surrender your plates before your NYS liability insurance lapses. It has nothing to do with moving, but rather with where the vehicle is registered and insured. It is not at all uncommon for people to obtain an insurance card, register the vehicle and then cancel the insurance, get a refund and drive around with no insurance. Police officers do not have instant access to a real time database that would tell them if the insurance was recently cancelled.
In some states (NC is one of them) the insurance companies say that as soon as your insurance is canceled, they will call the DMV to let them know to suspend the registration. My agent reminded me quite strongly to turn in the plate when I dropped the insurance on a no-longer running truck that was destined for the scrapyard.
Isn’t this also why some states change their plate design every few years? I have a couple old plates lying around from a state I no longer live in, and the designs are ones that are no longer used.
Say I move out of NY to MD. Naturally I’m going to surrender my NY license and get a Maryland license. Then I would find a local insurance company, get a policy and register my vehicle in MD. I would call my NY insurance broker and cancel the old policy. Supposedly this in turn woiud signal NY DMV to cancel my NY registration. Again, unless you have a special vanity plate that someone would want, NY does not reuse a standard plate combination. So why should I bother mailing the NY plates back to the NY DMV? Assuming I never intend on moving back, other than being on a shit list, what could they do to me?
FWIW, when my parents moved to Florida in the 80’s, they went through the above process. They mailed me their NY plates and asked me to turn them in (which I did). But since their FL licenses and registratons were in order already, why should they have bothered?
Anyone out there work for a DMV and have the official scoop?
How does this play with states that make you surrender your out-of-state plates in order to register with them? If my new state has taken my old plates I obviously can’t give them back to my original state. Do the state DMVs actually, like, TALK to each other …
When you turn in your plates, you should receive an official “Proof of surrender” document which you should hold onto forever.
I received an EZ-Pass bill for over a thousand dollars (tolls + fines and penalties) for plates I had surrendered more than a decade earlier. Presumably someone had mis-typed the plate number somewhere in the EZ-Pass system, and they then used DMV records to find the last holder of record of those plates. The only way I could get them to void the bill was by proving that I had surrendered the plates. Fortunately, I stll had the document.