We’re having trouble finding good info, so I’m hoping some of you have dealt with this situation.
Daughter is starting a grad program in West Virginia in January. She will be driving my car cross-country and keeping it there for the 2.5-year program. No summer breaks, just holidays, for which she will occasionally fly home. She will return to Seattle after graduation.
We’re trying to figure out how to do this legally and smartly. I will add her to the title of my car. Does she need to establish residency in WV and therefore register the vehicle there? We also need to figure out insurance. I am waiting for a call back from our agent to discuss options. (She currently pays for her own car–which I will be using for two years–but her State Farm policy is somehow tied to ours.)
Oh, and so long as I am asking, any ideas on health insurance? She ages off my plan in January, right after she arrives in WV. Her school does not offer a plan for students. She’ll have no income.
I believe the 26 year old will be entitled to continue on COBRA for 36 months instead of 18. This assumes that the parent’s plan offers coverage in WV.
Some states also tie vehicle registration requirements to whether someone chooses the state as their civic home for voting. If she plans to vote absentee back in – I’m taking a stab that you’re in Washington? Then that sends one kind of message. If she decides to vote in WV while she’s living and studying there, it might send a different message. Do look into whether there are any implications from that decision (I know my New England state has some driver’s license and car registration requirements that kick in under some circumstances if students who came from another state choose to vote here).
She may be eligible for Medicaid, although it’s dependent on the rules of the state. Where I worked, we helped our grad students figure out insurance options, and many did qualify for Medicaid.
An individual health insurance policy is easy to obtain and very cheap at age 26. She can just find the options with minimal internet research. Most universities offer some type of student insurance plan as well.
It seems likely she would wish to establish WV residence if she is there more than a year.
On first glance, someone who:
“maintains a permanent place of abode in this state and spends in the aggregate more than one hundred eighty-three days of the taxable year in this state” will be a (tax) resident."
However, there is an important exception as to when an even year-long abode is not considered of permanent nature:
Per example, an employee’s WV home that was only taken due to a long-term (but temporary) project assignment, doesn’t make that abode a “permanent” one.
So - in the case of your daughter, if she intends her permanent home to remain your home, and intends to only temporarily live in West Virginia most of the year, for the purposes of “accomplishing” her graduate studies, then it seems to me that she qualifies for that exception and is not required to treat WV as her “home stage” (at least for tax purposes).
And yes, not registering to vote in WV would be another important indicator.
There might be good reasons though, to want to register her car. I don’t know how insurance rates will compare. And, (nothing to do with WV) an out-of-state license plate can lead to extra scrutiny at times, even completely innocent and subconscious.
Speaking for my own neighborhood - I can’t help but notice an “out of place” car, no matter how hard I consciously try not to descriminate.
Finally - there might be an issue with vehicle inspection. It’s a bridge my daughter and I will cross next year, when her car’s inspection sticker will expire - more than a day’s drive away from “our” inspection stations…
@DigitalDad just mentioned the things I was thinking of. It is hard to reregister a car if the home state requires inspection (not impossible, just hard). I lived in Florida and there were a ton of OOS plates because of military members, but in other places it is hard to get a parking permit, a toll sticker, a beach permit.
I think for 2.5 years I’d become a resident. If she does qualify for medicaid, she’d need to be a resident. Other services too. Just so much easier to get a library card, vote, get a resident rate at the local park/rec center/gym. Here you even get cheaper rates for tee times at the city owned golf courses if your license has a city address on it.
Her insurance (both car and health) rates could be much cheaper in WV than if you live in a west coast city.
My kid’s OOS professional school did not offer health insurance until her 3rd year there. For years one and two, she just went online and bought a health insurance plan. She was not eligible for any kind of subsidy…because she had no income. But I don’t recall that the costs were horrible.
Thank you, everyone, for all of the helpful input (and to the moderator [?] who added the locale to the post heading). Keep it coming; we’re examining all the possibilities!
My D has moved to another state- not for school but she thinks will only be there two years. We’re going to add her name on her Jeep and have her insure it. I was hoping to keep it registered here for convenience since she’s probably coming back but my insurance agent sister says it needs to be insured in the state it is garaged. I just paid it off so when the title arrives we’ll figure out what she needs to do in her state.
Not sure if any of that applies to your D since you guys are sort of switching vehicles but my sister did say if she were to insure it she would have to say it was garaged in our state and that’s just not true.