The Harrowing Tale Of Car Registration IN Georgia: Part 1
The car registration is finally (mostly) resolved, so I'm going to share that complete saga over the next few days. I'm doing this for two reasons. Firstly, so that you know you aren't the only one running into frustrating and annoying bureaucratic things. And secondly, we learned more about our rights as military families, which is information everyone should have.
So, let's set the stage: We moved to Georgia on January 2nd, 2024, and were very on top of getting insurance set up. Our new homeowner's policy started on the day of closing, and car insurance started on the same day we canceled our Oklahoma insurance so that we never had a coverage gap.
You can set up those policies to cancel retroactively and still get refunded the money for the coverage, so we didn't cancel any Oklahoma insurance until we got to Georgia, even though we already had new coverage in place. That's a general rule of thumb for all carriers of that kind of insurance. USAA may have something in place to simplify that process, but we haven't had them for many years since they weren't competitive price-wise in the Oklahoma market.
We got our insurance but had not registered our cars in Georgia. In my mind, I thought that I had until July to do mine and December to do my husband's since that's when they expired in Oklahoma. That is not the case. You are supposed to do it within 30 days of moving to a new place. There is an exception for military families where they are given six months to do this process, but I recommend getting on top of it relatively early in case you bump into the stuff we did.
Our insurance guy called and explained that we needed to register our car ASAP. He said we had until April 8th (not really sure what would have happened if we hadn't done it by then), and we found this out about halfway through March. I initially went alone to take care of my car and was turned away at the door because I did not have a Georgia driver's license.
I had no intention of changing my license. The biggest reason for this was my feelings. I was born and raised in North Carolina. I love NC, and we plan to move back there permanently when the military is behind us. But there were also good logistical reasons not to change it. Changing it here would mean changing it every single PCS going forward. It would also mean moving all of my resident licenses, which would again need to be changed every time we moved (which is a much more expensive change). Some people have to do this regardless, but for my licenses, I only need to get a non-resident for the state we are living in and maintain my residency back in NC, so it's a much lower expense.
So, we returned on April 5th (the Friday before our Monday deadline). We discussed my car first and were told the same thing: that I would have to change my license. I asked about adding my husband to the car's title so that he could just register it in his name. They said they would need to remove my name, so I didn't go "first" (whatever that means) on the title. Essentially, what they equated to was selling my car to my husband.
For one thing, that felt icky to me. It's not the 1950's, so I shouldn't have to hand over all my property to my husband. But the more pressing concern is that we would have to pay taxes on the sale of the car, which would be $500 out of pocket.
At this point, I decided to deal with my car later and just to register my husband's, but once they saw that my name was also on his title, they went back to getting my new license. So we caved and went to change my residency. I cried through this entire process. The lady taking the photos asked if I wanted a retake. I said no since it was not like I would pull myself together in the next three minutes. We left that office with the temporary license and returned to the tag agency.
Also, as a side note, do all of this with a supportive spouse who comes with you for the entire process and completely understands why you're crying. He didn't make any jokes or get frustrated by my reaction because he understood why it was happening. When those same emotions flared up again over the next few days, I was met with the same understanding.
I’m going to wrap up there for today since this is kind of a long story, but it is one that matters so I hope you’ll come back Wednesday to read part two.