The Expert Podcast

So very frequently in our conversations with clients, the subject or term abandoned vehicle is brought up by the client. Many times it's an effort to try to find a way to get a title for a vehicle that is becoming difficult. Technically, an abandoned vehicle is one that shows up somewhere that nobody knows where it came from. It just showed up out of the blue, whether it's on private property, public property, on a road, on a highway, in a field, and nobody knows where it came from. It just turned up and it wasn't known where the origin of the vehicle came from.

In most cases, when clients or customers are speaking to us, that's not really the case. It's something where they bought the vehicle and the person never gave him paperwork or somebody gave him the vehicle, never gave him paperwork. The reason why that distinction is very important, if you declare a vehicle to be abandoned, in almost every jurisdiction, you have to surrender the vehicle to the government.

The short answer is Finders Keepers does not apply to vehicles. A vehicle that is abandoned has to be processed through a very specific government legal process. And I'm going to show you a couple examples from a couple states of what that is. Now, that's the bad news. The good news is there are almost certainly much better methods of getting a title. If your intention is to get a title for this vehicle, do not call it abandoned. If you call it abandoned, it's going to make your process either impossible or much, much, much harder.

You can't just make up imaginary storage fees or claim a lean against the vehicle. None of that works. So, forget about abandon. Look at other methods. Even if the rare instance your jurisdiction, your county or state does allow abandoned vehicles, that process is going to be very highly scrutinized and you're probably going to lose. So, let's look at a couple examples first of what you don't want to do and then we'll talk about what you do want to do afterwards.

Here's some state of Tennessee talk about abandoned vehicles. It tells you what the different codes are. You can look up all these codes. It says what the public may or may not do. The public may report vehicles left abandoned, immovable, or unattended to law enforcement. Private property owners, apartment buildings, or you know, if you have a piece of property you own, may call a towing firm and have vehicle removed. That's it. The public may not, key words, may not have the vehicle towed, sell the vehicle, register the vehicle, obtain ownership of the vehicle. So, if you are the general public, you will be back in your video in just a few seconds.

In the meantime, remember that actualhum.com offers you live one-on-one private video consultation with an expert in this exact subject. We want to listen to your story. We want to hear your questions. We want to give you expert advisement of your options and tell you what we know about your particular situation. Now, back to your video.

Not a property owner, you cannot obtain ownership of the vehicle. That's key. So, you don't want to call it abandoned in Tennessee. What about Texas? Texas says abandoned property, including vehicles. What you have to do is you have to remove it to a storage facility. Basically, you have to call a towing company and they will go through a government process of notifications, of official reporting, of inquiries to the DMV. In many cases, it doesn't even work for them.

Many of the conversations we have are for towing companies or storage companies that have obtained a vehicle that they towed for somebody that was truly abandoned and they come to find out they can't get a title either because if you don't follow every last step in the right order in the right amount of time, you lose. In some cases, you have to start the process within 30 days, but you can't do too soon. You can't charge certain fees. You have to do notifications, but first you have to notify the government that you have the vehicle. If you miss one step, the whole process is void.

So, even for licensed repair and towing facilities, if you fail to follow the exact steps, you're going to lose on your abandoned vehicle title anyways. So, what can you do? The good news is your situation probably legally defined is not an actual abandoned vehicle. It's probably what's called a title recovery, meaning that somehow you obtained the vehicle. The vehicle was given to you or transferred to you or left with you somehow. You know where it came from, which is good. And you just didn't get a title. You didn't get the proper documents. You may have a bill of sale, but you'll probably find out or if you didn't already, that's not going to get you a title.

So, you can go through a title recovery process to have the vehicle be declared you as the owner and then you can get a title, register, sell it, whatever you want to do. But as soon as you start calling it abandoned, now it's a free-for-all and the government has to step in and say, "We will decide who gets to have the vehicle." If you are in possession of the vehicle, you have the keys to the vehicle, you have the VIN number, and the vehicle was given to you or left with you, you have the right to do a title recovery attempt.

And that title recovery varies from state to state. Our website, you can click the link below, we'll have a whole section on instructions on exactly how to do a title recovery to get the ownership recognized as you being the owner and get a new title with your name on it. If you found this video helpful, be sure to click on other videos on our channel to see if there's further information that could give you more insight into resolving your particular situation.