Selling a car without owners signature!

Our daughter has gone travelling and as expected ran out of cash therefore wants us to sell her car, which she has not been able to run for 6 months due to cost. Obviously she is not here to counter sign the the relevent form so my question is can it be sold?

How good are you at forging signatures? (-:

It must be doable; what happens if you can’t find the V5? If you sell it without paperwork, IIRC the DVLA will write to you asking you to confirm the sale is legit.

I think what I’d do is sell it, with a covering letter to the DVLA when you send back the slip. It might be worth her writing to them too, confirming her authorisation for you to sell it?

What’s the chances of the DVLA checking the signature to the one on her driving licence?

A covering letter from her authorising you to sell would be good backup, but then, she has to sign that too!

You can’t be the first person to be in this situation so they’ll have seen it before, you could always give them a ring and see what they say if you don’t feel like chancing it.

i know someone who’s car was sold without there knowledge fraudulently – seller forged the sig. only found out 6 months later when they found it was sold.

so it can be done – as long as your daughter never reports you for forgery i’d say it’s done…

Sell it to you first via forged signature (or post it to her to sign – risky!) to get the V5 in your name. Then sell it to the new owner legitimately – well as legitimately as you can given that you got it on a forged signature!

A bigger problem is going to be your buyer.

“Yeah, it’s our daughter’s car, she’s on holiday but she’s asked us to sell it for her.”

“Right you are then, mister.” *runs away*

I know it’s terribly 20th century, but could she fax you a signed ‘please sell my car’ letter?

Just a point, but, the ‘registered keeper’ is not always the legal owner.

Therefore quite easy to say you bought the car, are technically the legal owners but your daughter is the registered keeper.

Is there a reciept from when it was purchased?

“I bought this car for my daughter, but now she doesn’t want it” – and get your missus to sign the V5 as your daughter if it’s in your daughter’s name?!

As mentioned above the V5 lists the registered keeper, not the owner, of the vehicle.

Just sell it and sign yourself…

totally agree with Frogstomp….

V5 is for keeper and not legal owner.

What’s this “legal owner” of which you speak?

The keeper is the person legally responsible for the vehicle tax etc. They might well not be the owner, but I’m not aware of any legalities which would apply to an “owner” as anyone other than the keeper.

To wit, if person A ‘owns’ the car but person B is the registered keeper, it’s person B who is at liberty to sell it, no?

Mate of mine has a nice car. I think I’ll claim ownership of that tomorrow and sell it. He’s only the keeper, after all.

Mate of mine has a nice car. I think I’ll claim ownership of that tomorrow and sell it. He’s only the keeper, after all.

You may be able to sell it, but you would not be entitled to sell it.. if someone lent you something, that does not give you the right to sell it as your own, even though you could. If the sale was disputed the onus would be on you to prove that you had the right to sell it… (whether the actual owner could prove this is another matter!).

Admittedly it is not a very clear distinction, especially as a change of owner almost inevitably is punctuated by a change of keeper also.

Precisely.

So who’s “entitled” to sell it? If the keeper of the vehicle sells it, and the ‘owner’ also sells it at the same time only to someone else, who legally owns the car now?

I’m not arguing that the keeper isn’t necessarily the owner of the car; however, from a legal standpoint the distinction doesn’t make a jot of difference. There’s no such thing as a “legal owner,” when you sell a car you change keepers, not owners.

As I understand it, anyway.

If the keeper of the vehicle sells it, and the ‘owner’ also sells it at the same time only to someone else, who legally owns the car now?

The person who bought it from the owner now owns it. If the keeper is not the owner, the keeper doesn’t have any property to sell. There is absolutely a difference from a legal standpoint. “Nemo dat”.

DVLA will not transfer registration without the old keeper signing off on it but the DVLA only records the “keepership”, not the ownership.

Can’t you just post the V5 off for her to sign and then she sends it back? If it doesn’t arrive the new owner will have to apply for a new V5, worst case.
Then the old/current owner will be notified in writing that someone else is applying for a new V5, and all you do is ignore that and the new owner gets the new V5. Simples!