old old old vehicle ownership transfer

[Enigma]

Does anyone know what's involved in transferring ownership of a vehicle when you have no papers for it and have never had it insured in your name?
I vaguely recall something about after 7 years certain criteria don't need to be met............

 

[45Kevin]

I have several old motorbikes with no titles.

Here in Calgary the procedure is to take the vehicle down to the police station where they verify the VIN, and then they do some type of search to check and see if it is recorded anywhere. If it comes up clean, as in un-stolen, then they issue a title for it.

There is of course a fee for that service.

It's been quite a few years since I looked into this so my info may be out of date.

 

[BC40]

Talk to ICBC. As I remeber if it doesn't show in the system as stolen property, there is a letter that is sent to the last owner on record to ask their permission, or something like that. If the owner is deceased or out of country it is still possible to get papers made up. Thought I'd need to go through the process for my 40 but the guy eventually paid to get some duplicate papers printed some 15-20 years after it had last been insured.

 

[crawlin cruiser]

Talk to ICBC. As I remeber if it doesn't show in the system as stolen property, there is a letter that is sent to the last owner on record to ask their permission, or something like that. If the owner is deceased or out of country it is still possible to get papers made up. Thought I'd need to go through the process for my 40 but the guy eventually paid to get some duplicate papers printed some 15-20 years after it had last been insured.

its called last resort..

if the papers dont come back or are unanswered after a period of time,the truck is yours

 

[seapotato]

I almost did this with a vehicle a few years back but decided not to. It had change hands multiple times with no papers.

It had been at least 20 years since it had been licensed, and it seemed to me that if the person contacted wanted to be a total ass about it he could say " hey that's my truck how the hell did you end up with it."

At which point I imagine a total nightmare of paperwork and police would start.

In my case I heard that the previous owner was an old dude, who apparently was rather crotchety, and not entirely there, so 20 years might seem like last week.

Didn't want to deal with that, but maybe I was just being paranoid.



Was a total rebuild from scratch pretty much anyways, so I had other options.