Rego in dead woman’s name for 10 years
Hi, I’m trying to find out if there’s an easy way to fix this issue or if we might face trouble.
In 2016 the partner (“Mary”) of a family member (“John”) died quite suddenly and sadly. John was pretty overwhelmed with all the administration you need to do following a death and they had young kids to look after so we all helped where we could. One of the things John just couldn’t cope with was Mary’s car - one of the last things Mary did was drop off the car for a service so I think there’s some difficulty around dealing with it because it’s part of the story. John didn’t want to see or deal with it so it got stored at my parent’s house.
Six months later I’m in desperate need of a car as mine just konked out and John said of course I can borrow Mary’s car. Then we discussed it and borrowing turned into me buying it and he said he felt good about it, that the car would stay in the family. We agreed on a price and discussed going to vicroads to do the change of ownership. But to do this John had to first get it changed from Mary’s name into his. As I understand it this is not a difficult process, he has all the paperwork stating he inherited all Mary’s property, but he simply can not or will not go. I’ve offered to go with him, so have several other family members, but he says he wants to then doesn’t or can’t. I didn’t want to push it so I’ve mostly left it alone over the years, I’ve asked a couple of times in the last 9 years if he’s up to doing the paperwork now to no avail.
So for nearly ten years I’ve been driving a car that’s registered to a dead woman. I’ve been asked twice who the car belongs to when pulled over by police doing random breath tests. Both times I kind of fudged the truth, saying that I’m just borrowing it and it belongs to my cousin and his partner and it could be in either of their names. Thankfully that’s been enough for the police so far.
But my question is this, can I get in trouble for knowingly doing this?
And will John face any trouble if/when I finally get him to go to vicroads?
Also, has anyone had to deal with getting a deceased persons car transferred into your name? Was it a difficult process?
Thanks for reading and for any help you can provide :)
(And if you’re going to tell me I should just cut my losses, I really can’t. I live on a pension and cannot afford to buy another car. I need to get this car in my name. I’ve not paid him but the amount we agreed upon is sitting in an account untouched and I feel I owe it to him considering I’ve been driving it for a decade. I just want to get this sorted easily and fairly.)