The Expert Podcast

Here we are once again with another in our series about vehicle court order titles. This is a very popular subject for our channel and for our title division.

If you have a vehicle that was purchased without a title, what are your options? Well, in some states, you can do a bonded title, but there's a downside to that. You have to purchase a surety bond, which is sometimes one and a half times the value of the vehicle. You may be able to do some other types of contacting prior owners and getting lien releases, but in most cases, a court order title is the most direct and powerful way to go.

Now, the problem is, in most counties, they don't have a set procedure for this. They don't have a set of forms. However, in about 15 counties in the country, there is a package of documents that are provided with instructions, and we'd like to show you those. So even if you're not in one of those counties, you can see how the process works.

So here is a perfect example of a set of documents, happening to be in a county in the state of Kansas, about what they call a quiet title. That's what they call their court order title. They call it quiet title, and the Quiet Title statute talks about determining title or interest in property.

So there you go, title to a motor vehicle. How does it work if you are a person who purchased a vehicle without a title and the last owner isn't available? That is a reason. So it says often because the initial owner of the vehicle did not sign the title when handing it over, and the new owner can't find the title to fix the problem. From time to time, it's because the vehicle is wrecked or abandoned. So here's an example of abandoned vehicles, just for possible reasons.

A quiet title action can be used to clear up ownership on any vehicle, whose title is given by the state of Kansas. It can include a car, motorcycle, travel trailer, or manufactured home, so it's important to see that it could also be a mobile home.

The first step before filing any action is to make sure the vehicle is not stolen. This is very important. You want to make sure it's not a stolen vehicle. This is another example of something we've talked about before. You can check if it's stolen on NICB. It gives you the link right there. And for NICB, it tells you a very important disclaimer. It says you can do this by checking on this free website provided by the National Insurance Crime Bureau and ICB VIN. This doesn't guarantee the car is not stolen, but it's a good start.

We talk about this all the time. If you are looking at any of these online VIN checks, Carfax, NICB VIN Checker, VIN Audit, whatever it is, they have some information, but it's not 100%, especially when it comes to liens. If the vehicle is reported stolen, you won't be able to file a quiet title action and obtain ownership. That's obvious. It's one of the reasons we tell you to do this, because normally if you file for a court order title, in this case called Quiet Title, you'll get a title as long as the vehicle is not stolen.
If you don't have a current title, you should look up whether a Kansas title has been issued. That helps you know which direction to go. It'll also tell you who the other parties are. The person filing the case is the plaintiff; that's you. That's the person who ultimately wants to have their name on the card; that's the plaintiff.

And here is the civil information sheet that you fill out for this process, with a bunch of check boxes. You put in the plaintiff's name and defendant's name, and they already have this filled in for you. The defendant is the Kansas Department of Revenue; that's who issues titles. They already have it filled in, so that's helpful. If there's any other defendant, like lien holders or prior owners, you put them here. I have a lot of places for that. And it tells you what you're trying to do. Here is the civil petition. The plaintiff is you, plaintiff blank claim against defendants involving a car, motorcycle, and VIN number. Plaintiff "U joeo" is a resident of County, Kansas, residing at. It tells you the wording for the court order title plaintiff request judgment as follows: to issue a new certificate of title for property in the name of the plaintiff. That's what you're asking for.

And normally, they're going to require you to provide some documentation about how you purchased the vehicle, as well as some documentation that you tried to contact the prior owner. You put an ad in the newspaper, and you wrote an affidavit of service stating that you did certain things.

This is the affidavit to obtain service. The reason for showing you this is because most counties don't have these pre-made documents. There are 3,611 counties in the country. There's only about 15 that have any kind of pre-done paperwork for a court order title. In fact, in most counties, if you walk in and say I want to do a court order title or a Qui title, they're not going to know what you're talking about because it's not a predefined type of case for them, like a small claims case or a divorce case. So you have to do all the work.

However, you can use these templates; you can cut and paste from them to make up your own documents. Now every county's a little different. Some counties might want the wording different, and some counties might want the plaintiff different. But at least if you have something you can file, they can tell you what to fix. If you go in empty-handed with nothing and say, Hey, what do I fill out? They can't help you. They're not allowed to do this because they consider it legal advice from a government agency. But if you go in at least with some paperwork filled out and prepared and it's wrong, they can tell you no, this is wrong; you have to fix it. And a lot of times it's trial and error anyway because the clerk or magistrate might want it different every month as they develop their procedures.

So this is a good example of a court order title. They call it a quiet title. A couple of takeaways from this video are that, in most cases, your county is not going to have this. They're not going to have these paperwork examples for you to use. You're going to have to fill it out on your own. Now our website will have some examples you can use. The other takeaway from it is that it's enough of a process that some counties are creating this; they give you instructions. We're on page four right here, page four of 16. The instructions are on the first five pages: what to do for service, what to do for submitting a case, what the filing fees are, and the and the hearing date finalized. It gives you all the details. So the instructions are important; just having these forms by themselves isn't enough. If you had these forms but didn't know the instructions, you'd be out of luck. So make sure that you read through some example instructions from some counties. This particular county in Kansas has it; there are a few counties in Ohio that have it. Get an idea of what the instructions are. We have videos that will give you some instructions as well. We also have a title service if you want assistance with this. We could do that, but keep in mind that not every county calls it the same thing. Some call it a court order title, some call it a magistrate title, some call it a quiet title, some just call it a petition of ownership, and some call it a rid of mandamus. Forget about the language or the wording; just do the process that matches what your county is. If you have any questions, you can reach us on our website. We're glad to be of assistance.