What The Judge Said About A Bill Of Sale

Common Questions on Bill of Sale and Title 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. And 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 they play them on YouTube, which gets a lot of views. In this case, the person had a vehicle that was impounded by a towing company.

Towing Company Title Verification 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. You don’t want somebody to get your car out of impound just by paying a fee, and 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.

Bill of Sale vs Title at the Towing Yard They’re going to look at the title for the vehicle and 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.” So, 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. And the towing company said, “No, we’re not giving you this car because we don’t know if it’s your car.” So, the person had to leave.

Fees Accumulate as Title is Verified To take the car, and in the meantime, the towing company racked up 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. So, watch what the judge says. This is a very good legal description of how the government, the courts, and the DMV feel about a bill of sale.

Bill of Sale vs Title Legality “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.

Notarized Bill of Sale and Ownership You might say, “Well, it got notarized.” But who notarized it? Who signed it and verified 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.”

Ownership Issues with Bill of Sale 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.

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