I just love cleaning up someone else's mess

a reply to: Nyiah

Put the car in neutral, push it onto the side of the road (safest spot you can find). It’ll get towed.

Someone has grand mom's stuff, likely your mother. I don't think a title just disappears unless someone threw it out at some point. It might even be in the car somewhere. I've recovered an amazing amount of important documents from my grand mother (my mother's mother) from my stepfather who had my mother's belongings after she passed.

I found and retrieved a crap load of my father's important papers from a storage shed he had shortly before he sold the building. I also retrieved all his mother's photos and papers from a garage at his Florida home.

I got lucky to be sure, but it just goes to prove that people store that stuff until they die and then their children acquire it and stash it away too. Maybe you'll get lucky and track it down soon.

Hopefully you can figure it out, otherwise give it to someone who can deal with the legal issues in what ever manner they might choose. Someone with a chop shop or a scrap place with a shredder that is willing to make it all go away if you just give it to them for free.

a reply to: Nyiah

Why not just donate it? There's lots of places who will come pick up a dead car for free and you get a tax write off for it. Some will even pay you if the car is worth anything (I think that's even a law in some states).

If someone else posted this, sorry, I didn't read them all.

ETA - I've given three vehicles away like that (two trucks and one car). They show up with a wrecker, and BOOM...it's gone! I didn't even care about the write off. Heck, it doesn't even have to have wheels on it, they'll still take it!

After reading your thread a little more...I'd probably wrench on it a little bit just for the fun of trying to get it running, but that's just me.

Another option is to get a "salvage title" for it. If you don't have legal ownership of the car (i.e. a title in your name), you will not get one. A salvage title would be your only option. With a salvage title you can get it licensed. Then drive the crap out of it to keep mileage off your good car and donate it after you get some use out of it.

To update this, my mother surprised us and did go through her papers, and DID find the title, she mailed it back to us.

We spoke to a lawyer who assured us we weren't on the hook for anything legally if we junked the car, or claimed it as abandoned, due to the amount of time that has passed and nobody coming for it, so we opted to junk it. We don't need it, and neither us us had enough GAF left to bother with getting it running again and selling it later. We got a much nicer sum for it than we expected, and honestly, after factoring the cost of getting it retitled & registered, we would have netted about the same profit anyway. Junking it was literally easier for about the same end amount.

That was hauled off today, so tomorrow, reorganizing the garage commences Stupid car turned into a catch-all for stuff, so now we need to actually find spots for things, lol.

Most excellent. Now for a rummage sale. Lol