Death of a spouse. Implications for the cars log book

MyRealNameToo

Sea_Shell said:

MyRealNameToo said:

Sea_Shell said:

MyRealNameToo said:

Sea_Shell said:

Keep_pedalling said:

Who the hell worries about this sort of thing when they have just lost their spouse? Yes it needs transferred to a new keeper and that person will need to tax it as well. The estate administrator needs to claim back any unused tax.

I thought the insurance on the vehicle would effectively be invalid upon death too.

So if they both drove the car as "theirs", then these issues do need to be thought about very soon after a death.

The insurer would get a very bad press, however, if the surviving spouse had a claim thrown out, if they had an accident before having a chance to sort the paperwork out.

So would an insurer dig their heels in?!

No, they will change the insurance to be "the estate of" and it's not invalidated. 

Most won't offer a renewal after the policyholder passing so there may be an issue if you notify them the day before the renewal that the policyholder has died 

If they are notified?

What if you haven't notified them yet, in your grief?   Which was my original point, in reply to @Keep_pedalling

Then claims will tell you to contact Service to make the change and they will continue and deal with the claim. 

You hope.    Are all insurers likely to be as helpful?

There will always be exceptions but most of those are likely be down to individual members of staff rather than their employer and so will be quickly corrected when escalated. 

Training, assuming a half decent system, is relatively short for first line staff in non-advisory insurance. A call to report the death of an insured is not an every day occurrence and so people can make errors especially if they are the sort to try and wing it rather admit they dont know and put the customer on hold to find out. It's never helped by the fact that average handling time tends to be a key performance metric so staff dont want to spend 5 minutes waiting to speak to a team leader and mess up their stats. 

p00hsticks

Sea_Shell said:

Car_54 said:

Sea_Shell said:

redofromstart said:

I lost my husband last year unexpectedly.  He had several vehicles in his name and it was slightly complicated to sort them.  Essentially they go into limbo for a bit, and even using the 'tell us once thing' meant it took the DVLA a few months to write to me.

It is wider than the ownership thing.  The vehicle tax ends with the death of the owner and technically you can't re-tax the vehicle because you are not the owner.  I was named driver on his car insurance  and they allowed me to transfer that to my name for the balance of the policy which was helpful but i still couldn't drive it because I couldn't tax it.  The one I wasn't named on was allowed to continue for theft only for 30 days.  

There was no will, and I didn't need probate. If I had had either then I could have sold the vehicle without transferring it to my name.  What I actually did was transfer the car to my name as his spouse and in line with the DVLA instructions, and part exchanged it.  The garage said that it didn't matter to them that it made me the third owner on a 16 plate car.  

For the other vehicles I just did the online transfer of the V5 on the basis that I did have consent of the owner (me as I inherited everything), and have had no problems as a consequence. Three gifted to family, and one sold to a private buyer.  Vehicle tax refunded as part of that, and then the DVLA sent me another small cheque once they had processed his death.

Hope this helps.  It was just another stress in the mountain of Sadmin that I wouldn't wish on anybody.

Sorry for your loss, but a very informative post.

Why couldn't you do the on line ownership transfer for the car you were a driver of, so you could tax it?

The online transfer is to change the keeper, not the owner. There is no register of ownership.

Thanks for the clarification .   That is what I meant.

Why couldn't @redofromstart also transfer the KEEPER on line, when they have inherited all the cars, and was able to change the keeper on-line for the others?    

From personal experience, I suspect that if the next of kin / executor who registered the death has used the Tell Us once service to notify DVLA of the death , then the online transfer process won't work and they'll have to resort to sending off the paper VC5. 

I've had two stints as executor to an estate and both times I've found dealing with the car the most frustrating part of the process. 

sheramber

https://www.gov.uk/tell-dvla-about-bereavement/keeping-the-vehicle



my husband had just renewed the car insurance one month before he died.

I was named driver on the policy.

Insurance was changed to executry with me as main driver and him as named driver.

The policy continued for the  next 11 months when I then insured the car in my name.

Frozen_up_north

p00hsticks said:

I've had two stints as executor to an estate and both times I've found dealing with the car the most frustrating part of the process. 

Same here, the deceased persons car was left parked in a fairly open space off the road but still not a good location to leave it for any length of time.

We tried to obtain temporary insurance to move the car to a better location, neither the deceased persons insurance complany nor the 3 companies myself or my friends had would insure the car as the owner/keeper could not give permission! In the end we asked a garage to move it on trade plates for us. The executor sold the car without a problem, but the moving it to a safer location was an insurance minefield.

The "owner having to give permission" can catch you out where the owner is clearly unable to give permission. 

Mildly_Miffed

Frozen_up_north said:

The "owner having to give permission" can catch you out where the owner is clearly unable to give permission. 

The executor of the estate gives permission on behalf of the deceased, same as they administer all the rest of the estate, until such time as ownership passes to whoever.

In most married couples, that passing of ownership is trivial, as the entire estate goes to the surviving spouse. They become the owner.

The owner and the keeper are not necessarily the same person. The keeper is only a paperwork matter. But, again, the executor can give permission on behalf of the keeper, whoever the owner may be.

Frozen_up_north

Mildly_Miffed said:

Frozen_up_north said:

The "owner having to give permission" can catch you out where the owner is clearly unable to give permission. 

The executor of the estate gives permission on behalf of the deceased, same as they administer all the rest of the estate, until such time as ownership passes to whoever.

I suspect the insurance company call takers couldn't make a decision and found it easier to say no... even though an executor can sell a car before probate is granted, which can take several months, the quick solution for us was to have a garage move the car on trade plates and subsequently sell it for us.

sheramber

When my aunt dies her insurance company gave my nephew (executor who had returned from NZ) to drive the car.  

As she had lived in a rural village he would have difficulty visiting solicitors etc without transport.