The Expert Podcast

What is a vehicle lien release and how do you get one? Well, if you've paid off your car—paid off the loan—and you need to get the title for it, what happens is the lender, the bank you borrowed the money from, normally will take the title that they were holding. Because when you finance a car, they hold the title. They don't give it to you because they're the lien holder. They hold the title, and when you pay it off, they take that title out of their drawer, they sign it, stamp it "paid," and they mail it to you.

But what if you lose that title? What if they never send it to you? What if it gets lost in the mail? Well, the problem is, even though you paid off that lien, the lien record will still be in the DMV database because the lien holder normally doesn't remove it from the lien record. They just sign it, stamp it, and give it to you. So then what do you do? Well, the lien holder doesn't have another title to give you. You can't call them up and say, "Hey, mail me another title." They only have one title.

But what you can get is a lien release. And on the screen, you see an example of that from the state of Texas. It's a form that the lien holder can look up. There's a few other forms that go with it, and they can fill it out, sign it, and mail it to you. And then, once you get this, you bring that to the DMV and they give you a title.

Well, how do you get it? A lot of times people will say, "I'll just call up the lien holder. I'll pick up the phone, I'll dial my bank, and I'll tell them I need a title or lien release." And the lender is going to tell you one of two things. They'll either tell you, "Yeah, we can't do it because we already gave you one," or they might say, "Yeah, we'll send it," and then they never do. People have been waiting months and they never get it. Sometimes they'll tell you to go to some website to order it online, but the website doesn't really have anything.

The reason for it is because lenders, banks, financial institutions, car loan companies—they don't have a lien release department. There's not people just sitting around in an office somewhere waiting to do this work: to pull up this form, find it, look up the records, sign everything. They have to sign a bill of sale, they have to sign a letter of non-interest, they have to do a bunch of work. There's nobody sitting around with that extra time to do it. So they're going to just kind of give you the runaround and blow you off. They're going to say, "Get out of here."

So what do you do? The best way to do it, even though it doesn't seem fair, is for you to prepare all the forms. This form you see on the screen—this release of lien—is one example. A letter of non-interest, declaration of facts—the three or four documents that they need. You prepare them all, print them on paper, and mail them to the lien holder.

What we found over the years is that's really the only way you have. 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. Any chance of getting that lien release—even though you should have it and we think you deserve it—the bank's not going to do it unless you do all the work. And that's how we do it. This is an example of a package that we send to lien holders. We prepare all the documents—the lien release, the letter of non-interest, declaration of facts. We also put an envelope in it for them to send it to the client with a stamp on it. That way, the bank doesn't have to do any work. All they have to do is sign it.

Then we also prepare the documents that the client needs for a title. Because once you get the lien release, now you have to go to DMV to get a title or mail it in. We give you an envelope to mail it to the DMV too. So what we recommend doing is: do it the same way we do. Prepare this package of documents, send one half to the lien holder, one half to the DMV, and you'll get your title.

It's a little bit of a pain in the neck because you have to look up these forms, find out where they are—they're all available from the DMV. You can go down to the DMV in person, ask them for these forms, take them, fill them in, mail them to the lien holder, put a return envelope with a stamp. We recommend that, because here's the thing—see this book of stamps? Not many people or companies have stamps laying around anymore because everything is online bill pay. Nobody has stamps.

So if you send your document to the lender, they sign it, and now that person at the desk is looking around how to send it—they don't have a stamp, they have to go to the mailroom—they're just going to throw it away. They don't want to do any work. So do the work for them.

Now what if you didn’t pay off your car? What if it’s a charge-off or a write-off? You can do the same thing. You can prepare that package of documents, mail it to the lender. Most times they’ll pull it up on their screen, “Yep, it’s a charge-off,” and they sign it and mail it to you. There’s a backup with a magistrate title we’ve talked about in other videos—you can look that up.

Either way, if you’re going to try to communicate with the lien holder, don’t torture yourself by trying to do it by phone or email or fax or text. Do it all in writing. If you do anything where they have to do any kind of work—that package of forms takes an hour or so to put together, an hour and a half sometimes, sometimes two hours. If you’re asking them to do it, there’s probably not going to be a person there that wants to drop everything else in their job and do this for you.

So even though it’s a little extra work, if you want that lien release, put that together. Our website will give you instructions on how to do it. It’ll make it a little bit easier for you. But don’t leave it to chance and let that lien holder drag you around and basically give you the runaround and not give you what you need to get a title for your vehicle.

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.