Just fill out that form and turn it in, right? Wrong. Make a copy for your records–ALWAYS. You can toss it when you’re sure you’ll never need it, or stick it with your tax records for that year. Let me tell you a horror story, lived by someone close to me, whom I’ll refer to as “Sam.”
About three years ago Sam sold a vehicle through Craigslist. He took down the man’s name, address, and licence number, and they signed the transfer document for the DMV and an informal bill of sale. He collected his cash. A few days later Sam went to the DMV and turned in his transfer of ownership He would learn later that, because the DMV could find no record of the man, the transfer stayed in limbo.
Jump forward a few years. Sam is the sudden recipient of nasty calls from a collection agency. Seems the buyer never registered the vehicle but drove it and chalked up a bunch of tickets, leading the vehicle to be towed, stored, and liened. The company sent notices to Sam–at an address he hadn’t lived at in years–then, getting the certified notices returned, which legally counts as their having been delivered, the company auctioned off the vehicle, leaving a sizable balance owed. Sam’s not responsible because he no longer owned the vehicle when the tickets were issued, right? Wrong again. The vehicle was never taken out of Sam’s name until the company sold it at auction, leaving him holding the bag.
Sam had not kept copies of the paperwork he turned in to DMV. If he had, he might have pointed out that (maybe) the DMV person inputting the data was misreading it, or he’d have a clue of the buyer’s name and address and could have tried to find him, or…. Instead, he paid a whole bunch of money for someone else’s misdeeds.
Moral: Keep a copy of every potentially important scrap of paper you turn over to a person or agency.