How NOT To Claim An Abandoned Vehicle

Understanding the Abandoned Vehicle Misconception
Frequently in our discussions with clients, the topic or phrase abandoned vehicle comes up during consultation. Often it represents an attempt to discover a method to secure a title for a vehicle that has become challenging. Legally speaking, an abandoned vehicle is one that appears somewhere that nobody knows where it originated from. It just materialized unexpectedly. Whether it’s on private property, public property, on a road, on a highway, in a field, and nobody knows where it originated from. It simply appeared and it wasn’t known where the origin of the vehicle came from.

The Reality of Most Client Situations
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 Harsh Reality: Finders Keepers Doesn’t Apply
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.

Critical Advice: Avoid the Abandoned Vehicle Label
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.

Tennessee’s Abandoned Vehicle Regulations
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.

What the Public Cannot Do in Tennessee
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, 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.

Texas Abandoned Vehicle Requirements
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.

Even Licensed Facilities Struggle
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.

The Complexity Even for Professionals
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.

The Better Solution: Title Recovery
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.

Title Recovery Process Advantages
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.”

Your Rights in Title RecoveryIf 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.

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