Does your car insurance and registration have to be under the same name?
Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at
9:06 am
Dori K asked:
My mother is who my car is registered to, but its my name on the insurance? Will I run into problems with this?
My mother is who my car is registered to, but its my name on the insurance? Will I run into problems with this?
Tagged with: Car Insurance • Car Registration • Insurance
Filed under: Car Insurance
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
From what I have been told, what matters is that the car is insured. If the insurance is under your name and you are driving it, you shouldn’t have an issue!
Your insurance company needs to know this otherwise it is OK.
The reason they have to know the owner is so, in the event of a collision loss (assuming you have collision coverage) they make the check payable to the owner and body shop.
NO , they don’t have to be registered and insured under the same person as long as they are registered and insured.
The car is registered in the name of the owner. The insurance is in the name of the principle driver. In a lot of cases, they are not the same person. For example, I know a consulting engineer who went blind several years ago. He hired an assistant to do the things he can no longer do, including drive his car.
Yes, you will because you can’t insure something you don’t own. Two reasons – if there is a major accident, the insurance is in YOUR name & will defend YOU only, your mother will get sued as the owner of the vehicle & your policy will NOT protect her & will NOT defend her. She will need to hire her own attorney & pay for it & pay for any award given to the injured party that she is legally liable for.
What is to stop your neighbor from buying a policy on your vehicle & when you crash it, collect the insurance on it?? Or, have the vehicle stolen & collect the insurance. Same idea.
Also, any property damage check for the vehicle is made out to the policy owner, since you do not own the vehicle, you are benefitting from something you shouldn’t be. The company will find out you are not the owner, & will not pay you for the damages to the vehicle because you do not own it. Insurance pays to make a person “whole” meaning to the condition before the accident. If you didn’t own the car before the accident, you have nothing to be made whole for, you will not get the money. Your mother is then out her car & she will not get paid by the insurance because it is not in her name.
The best thing to do is either have your mother sign the car over to you & you insure it. Have her insure it with you as the driver or have her add you to the title & registration & then you add her as a co-owner on your policy.
If there is a loan on the car, they would want the insurance in the name of the person who owns the car & has the loan on the car.
Call your agent, see what they say.
This is why our agency ALWAYS asks who a car is registered & titled to. So many parents want to add their kids cars (owned solely by the child) to their policies & they can’t, the child has to get their own policy.
NO THIS IS JUST FINE.
Yep, you’ll have a problem. For one, the DMV won’t be able to match the two names, and those plates will look uninsured – which in many states, will get them cancelled.
For another, if you don’t own the car (and if the car is registered to your mom, you don’t), and you have it insured, the insurance company doesn’t have to pay you. You don’t own the car. It’s called “insurable interest”, and that’s what keeps people from insuring other people’s cars that they don’t own, to make money from their accidents.
The name on the title, registration, and insurance policy all have to match.