The Expert Podcast

One of the most common questions we get has to do with a bill of sale and a title and how they relate to each other and how you can get a title with a bill of sale maybe or how they're different. This is a great YouTube video from a channel that follows court cases. This YouTuber gets live feeds and recordings from various court cases around the country and plays them on YouTube, which gets a lot of views. In this case, the person had a vehicle that was impounded by a towing company.

Some of you may be familiar with this: where your car is impounded and you try to get it out, but the towing company makes you show a title in order to release your car. And for good reason, because you don't want somebody to get your car out of impound just by paying a fee if it's not their car. So the towing company is going to make sure they're only giving the keys to that car to the actual owner by verifying the owner by looking at a title. They're going to look at the title for the vehicle, right? They're going to make sure your name is on it before they hand over the car to somebody that just says, “Hey, give me that car out of your impound.”

What happened with this person in the video was they went to the impound yard to get their car out after it was there for a few days. They wanted to pay the fee, but they didn't have a title; they only had a bill of sale. The towing company said, “No, we're not giving you this car because we don't know what your car is.” So the person had to leave; they weren't allowed to take the car. In the meantime, the towing company racked up a whole bunch of more storage fees. The person came back a few weeks later with a title, and now they had to pay more money. This person is in court complaining that they shouldn't have to pay this money because they had a bill of sale.

Watch what the judge says, and this is a very good legal description of how the government, the courts, and the DMV feel about a bill of sale. Let’s see what they say: "The motorcycle is mine; here I am, but nobody would listen to me and I couldn't get it out because it was a police hold on it." Nobody would listen to you because you didn't have a title. Your video will be back in 8 seconds. In the meantime, remember you have access to live one-on-one consultation with the undivided attention of a licensed certified expert in this subject and many others. We want to listen to your story; we want to hear your questions and give you expert advice about your options. We want to tell you what we know about your situation and what options you have now.

"But I have a bill of sale!" "I bought the..." "I don't care. A bill of sale is something somebody could write on the back of a napkin. Well, I'm not going to register my vehicle with the state, so you're not the owner of it according to the state." You can see how the government looks at titles and bills of sale: if you don't have your name on the title record with the government, they don't consider it to be yours. A bill of sale is just a receipt that you gave somebody money, and it seems like it's an official thing. You might say, "Well, it got notarized." A notarized—who signed it and verified that that was the person?

This is a very good example of a judge who’s not part of the DMV, not really part of the title system, who looks at the case and says, "Look, I don't care if you had a bill of sale; anybody could write that. Anybody could write up a bill of sale. It just means that somebody took your money. That's all a bill of sale means. It's somebody who's willing to take your money and give you a receipt for your money, and it doesn't prove any ownership. It doesn't prove they own the vehicle; it doesn't prove you own the vehicle."

For example, I could go to Enterprise Rent-A-Car right now and rent a vehicle. I could drive it off the lot, put an ad on Craigslist or Facebook, and say, "Hey, I'm selling this car without a title; I'll give you a bill of sale." I give somebody a bill of sale; it doesn't mean they're the owner, because just because I gave them a bill of sale, it doesn't mean I was the owner. I didn't have the right to sell it to them.

Now, there are some methods you can use to get a title with a bill of sale, and you can check out our website to see those, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops. The government is going to make sure that you have the legal right to sell it and that nobody else is going to claim it, that it's not stolen, and that there are no liens on it, that kind of thing. So this YouTube video is an excellent inside description of how the official perception is of a bill of sale versus a title and what the rights are.

And this judge got right to the point; he didn't mess around. He said, "Look, I don't care what you had; a bill of sale doesn't mean anything. The towing company doesn't have to give your car up with just a handwritten receipt." 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.