Question: When a vehicle is jointly owned by husband and wife and one of them passes, how does the car get transferred over?
My brother in Georgia and his wife owned a vehicle jointly. She passed away. How does the vehicle pass to my brother? Does it automatically become owned fully by my brother? Or does the vehicle have to be formally transferred to him by action of the personal representative of her estate? Is the same going to be true for bank accounts they held jointly?
Loraine’s Answer: If your brother and his spouse both had their principal residence in Georgia, then Georgia law is likely what applies. Under Georgia law, here’s what happens with jointly owned assets:
Joint bank accounts in Georgia are normally owned as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, which means that the accounts pass automatically to the surviving owner when one owner dies. Unless your brother and his wife set up their joint accounts specifically as “tenants in common” accounts (this is not all that common in my experience, but it does happen), the most likely owned their joint accounts as joint tenants with rights of survivorship. That means, for joint bank accounts, your brother will likely only need to provide the bank with a certified copy of his wife’s death certificate to have the accounts transferred to his own name.
Automobiles are different from bank accounts. In Georgia, a jointly owned automobile is normally owned as tenants in common by the owners unless they specifically had it set up as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, and a jointly owned automobile will not pass automatically to the surviving owner when one owner dies by default. For a car to be owned as “joint tenants,” the owners must have specifically stated on the title application that they wanted to own it that way and the Department of Revenue must have noted that on the title as “JT TEN,” in addition to both owners’ names. However, titles don’t always have the correct notation on them, even if the JT TEN notation is shown on the Department of Revenue’s records.
Your brother should take the original title and registration paperwork for the automobile to the tag and title office along with a certified copy of his wife’s death certificate and see if they will transfer the title to his individual name. If they tell him that the title cannot be transferred that way, that will likely mean that the car was not owned by them as joint tenants.
In that case, the question becomes whether there are any other assets of significance in his wife’s estate. If so, then he may need to do start a probate process, an administration, or a year’s support claim to get those assets handled, and the car should be dealt with as part of whichever of those processes ends up being used. However, if the car is the only asset of significance in his wife’s probate estate, then he may be able to get an Affidavit of Inheritance from the Department of Revenue’s website (https://dor.georgia.gov/vehicle-inherited-or-purchased-estate) and use that Affidavit, plus the original title and a copy of his wife’s Will (if she had a Will that does not need to be admitted to probate because there are no other assets in the probate estate), to have the title transferred to himself. However, if he does not have the original title to the car, this option may not be available.
A consultation with an experienced probate attorney can help gather enough information to have a better idea of what he might need to do and help him figure out the best way to move forward. If he does not get a consultation, he’s liable to waste a lot of time and possibly money doing the wrong thing. Dealing with a deceased person’s assets isn’t always complicated or expensive but making mistakes in what you do often is.
Note: “Joint tenants” is a completely different form of joint ownership than “tenants in common.” “Joint tenants” includes the right of survivorship and results in the automatic transfer of the asset in question at one owner’s death. Tenants in common does not carry a right of survivorship and if one owner dies, that person’s interest in the asset remains in that person’s hands unless and until it is dealt with by an appropriate legal action (which could be a probate, an estate administration, or the administration of a trust, depending on how the asset was held). There is no such thing, in Georgia, as “joint tenants in common,” even though you may see that wording used online.
Key Estate Planning Takeaway: Generally, a jointly owned automobile will only pass automatically to the surviving owner when one owner dies if they own the car as “joint tenants” and this designation is included on the original title. Otherwise, the surviving spouse will need to take legal steps to transfer the title to his or her name only.
This “Q&A with Loraine” blog series is inspired by answers from Morgan + DiSalvo Partner Loraine DiSalvo to actual user questions posted by individuals on www.avvo.com. This blog is a more in-depth response than can be given on their site under their character limits for answers. To view the original question and Loraine’s original response, click here.
