A Question about Car Insurance

[MixedBerryJam]

I'm selling a car to a private party this afternoon. He's coming over and giving me cash and I don't know what he's doing with the car but it won't be here after that. I should take the insurance off now, right? So that if he drives it home it's not on my insurance if he crashes it. Do I have any responsibility to make sure it's already insured by him before he drives off with it? Thanks!

[mich1]

I'd call my insurance company to find out how to best protect myself. They know your policy, and how it covers you.

[chimera]

In the past when we've done things not at a dealer, we've done them at the title/notary place. This will be state dependent, ours you need to go to a title/tag/authorized PennDot agent place, we use the company we have our homeowner's insurance through as they offer this service in addition to being an insurance office. There are many stand alone ones. They do all the paperwork, get the temp tags and registration (and check insurance for the registration), and submit the sales taxes to PennDot.

In my state, plates normally state with the person, not the car. The main exception being transfers within family.

[puppylove64]

I'm not sure how much this varies state to state, but I always make sure we both have copies of the signed and dated title and/or bill of sale. I would cancel my insurance the following day.

If he left your driveway and wrecked, his insurance "should" cover him. Technically you have 48-72 hours to add a car to your policy (if you are already insured).

[imojoebunny]

Is he getting a loan? The last two cars we have sold, the people have had loans, which require insurance set up prior to purchase. We call insurance a day or two after we sell the car, and tell them to cancel insurance, that the car has been sold. Once DH forgot to do it, and did it a couple of weeks later, and they dated it back to the date we sold our car. In your case, I would call your insurance company and ask them for their policy, just to CYA. Here, you remove your plates when you sell, since they are person specific, and new buyer has 30 days to get new plates. Except in the case of buying a car with a loan, I have never had to show proof of insurance when purchasing a car. Once the title paper is signed when selling, I no longer have liability, even if he doesn't have insurance. Recently, our state (GA) added sales tax to private transactions, which can be on the seller or the buyer, so if your state has something like that, be sure who is responsible. It was $1700 for the last private sale car I bought, so not a sneeze.

[MixedBerryJam]

Phew! All done. I called the insurance co this morning (duh, thanks for the suggestion mich1, I honestly did not even think to do this!) and they walked me through it. He paid for the car then I cancelled the registration online a the RMV then I called insurance, who confirmed that the registration was cancelled and cancelled the insurance. Then I destroy and dispose of the plates. So it doesn't even take a trip to the RMV office!) He lives in the same complex as where I house the car (my brother's been storing it for me which is how the guy noticed it in the first place) so he drove it without the plates just to his own parking space. How he gets it registered/plated is not my concern. The best part is that the proceeds from the sale are paying for my hotel room at the Million Woman March in January (already booked).