How to sell the car of a deceased person

One of the more complex duties an executor must undertake after the death of a parent is the disposal of their parent’s car.

The family car poses a unique problem. It’s registered in your father’s or mother’s name, so you can’t just up and sell it. You will have to jump through some hoops first.

Even before you get around to filling out the paperwork, there are other considerations.

For example, is the car a collectable classic?

It’s not unknown for elderly car enthusiasts to own a garage queen that resides alongside the daily driver. If the collectable is a pre-1988 Ferrari or an original Shelby Mustang GT500 KR, expect fights to break out among the family members as to who will inherit it, even if that is stipulated in your parent’s will.

It may fall to the executor to decide – give the Mustang to a favourite grandchild, keep it for yourself, or sell it and split the proceeds in accordance with the wisdom of Solomon. Good luck with all that…

Things are so much easier if the asset is a Mazda3, a Toyota Corolla or a Hyundai i30.

Even then, however, you may have a dispute to settle if your deceased parent had a live-in partner not long before the end. If the new partner wants to keep the car, having presumed that ownership automatically transfers to them, what do you do then?

Do they have a valid claim? Can they contest the will in court on the grounds that they own the car?

That’s a question for a solicitor to answer, but the onus on the partner to prove that the car is rightfully theirs could be a tough challenge and the cost of proceeding to court to contest the matter could be higher than the value of the car, if it’s a mainstream model like an i30, Corolla or Mazda3.

• Negotiate with the family
• But take charge to make peace if you’re the executor
• Rely on legal advice if/when things blow up
• Save yourself the frustration of endless hours on the phone dealing with public servants and insurance clerks – use the online chat bot
• Use online facilities like carsales Instant Offer and RedBook

Transferring the registration from a deceased owner to the executor is the first step to offload the car and use the proceeds to pay debts incurred by the parent’s estate (funeral service, legal fees for probate, perimortem medical expenses, etc).

Taking time out of your day to visit the local office of your state’s registration authority is a better option than staying on the phone or attempting to explain the situation by email.

Both Service NSW and VicRoads offer a relatively fuss-free procedure for transferring the car’s registration from the deceased to the executor.

Documents for transfer of a deceased’s estate:
• Registration certificate
• Executor’s proof of identity (driver’s licence should do)
• Parent’s death certificate
• Either original or certified copy of your parent’s will, naming you as executor

There’s a small fee asked for the transfer, but you won’t be slugged for stamp duty. And you can also save the cost of a roadworthy certificate until such time as you are selling the car to a third party. That will only be after you receive approval from your solicitor to go ahead with the sale of the car, which is contingent on probate being approved first by the Supreme Court.

Once the car is sold, you must arrange for the proceeds to be deposited (either by electronic transfer or bank cheque) into a trust account managed by your solicitor on behalf of your late parent’s estate.

There has been some good news recently for Victorian EV owners. You will no longer be hit for the road user charge on your parent’s electric car – and that has also stopped other states and territories in their tracks, which were planning to follow suit with their own scheme.

What about the insurance cover for the car? This can be a difficult process, but you do need to notify the insurer that the car has changed hands and is garaged at a different address. If you don’t, one of the policy’s exclusions (material non-disclosure) could kick in, and the insurer could conceivably deny a claim if the car is stolen or catches fire in your garage, for example.

Best bet? Use the insurer’s online chat bot to communicate. You’ll spend too long on the phone, and insurers are beginning to step away from email communications in light of recent hacking events.

Have the policy number available, along with the car’s registration and your deceased parent’s contact details. If the insurer wants to charge you an extra premium for garaging the car in what it deems is a higher-risk suburb, negotiate to bring forward the due date of the policy or increase the excess.

You don’t want to be paying extra out of your own pocket to cover a car that will do nothing more than sit in your garage until it’s sold.

It could be months before everything is in order for you to now sell the car.

If expediting the sale of the car is top of your action priority list, carsales Instant Offer is a very convenient method for selling a recent-model car in good condition.

Otherwise, clean up the car and sell it privately for the value RedBook estimates it’s worth, or whatever the market dictates.