How to Sell a Car After the Owner Has Died in Alberta

A car sale is a short mechanical process, and none of that process changes because the owner has died.

What changes is who is allowed to sell it, and what has to be true before a buyer can put it in their own name. Here is what to settle, in the order it actually matters.

Who signs the bill of sale when the owner has died?

Not whoever has the keys. Who is entitled to sell a car whose owner has died is a question about the estate rather than about the car, and it is the one question on this page we will not answer out of our own experience. We buy cars. Get that part settled first, because everything below it assumes it already is.

Alberta's standard bill of sale, form REG3126, carries two Signature of Seller lines rather than one, because a vehicle registered in two names has to be signed off by both of them. If the registration carries the name of the person who died alongside somebody still living, that is a different situation from a car in one name and it is worth sorting out specifically rather than assuming. Two names on a registration has its own answer.

The reason any of this matters is not abstract. The buyer takes your bill of sale to a registry agent to put the car into their own name, and where the name on the registration and the name on the bill of sale are not the same person, something has to connect them. In an ordinary sale, a vehicle not registered to the person selling it is the one paperwork problem that reliably stops a purchase of ours until it is fixed.

So the first useful thing to do is not to list the car. It is to walk into a registry agent with the VIN and ask what they need to see for an estate transfer, while you have still promised nothing to anybody.

What if the car still has a loan on it?

A lien does not end when the owner does. If the vehicle was financed, the lender's interest is registered against the VIN in Alberta's Personal Property Registry, and an undischarged lien stops a transfer at the counter regardless of who is selling.

Check rather than assume. A VIN search at any registry agent costs about ten dollars and returns what is registered against the vehicle, which is worth running early even if you are fairly sure the car was paid off. If something is there, selling a car with a loan on it covers the payout and the release in full.

Whose name goes on the payment?

This is the part that catches people, and it is worth deciding before anybody is standing in a bank.

A bank draft can only be deposited into an account in the name it is issued to. That restriction is what makes a draft safe, and it is also what makes the payee line a decision rather than a detail. A draft made out to the person who died is not going into any account. A draft made out to you personally, when the money belongs to the estate, is a different problem and a harder one to explain afterwards.

So settle the name first. Work out which account the money is going into and what name that account is in, tell the buyer that name before the appointment, and have the draft printed that way.

Expect the funds to sit for several days once they are deposited as well. That is bank policy rather than anything to do with your sale, but it matters more when the account was opened for the estate last week, and how bank draft payment works covers the holds.

What happens to the plate and the insurance?

These are two separate errands and they do not move together.

The plate is the simple one. In Alberta a plate belongs to the owner rather than to the vehicle, so it comes off before the buyer drives away and it does not go with the car. The registration may well have lapsed while the car sat through everything else, which is a common enough situation that it has its own answer.

Insurance is the one to phone about rather than reason about. Call the insurer, say plainly what has happened, and ask what the coverage position is and whether anyone is able to drive the car before it is sold. It is a short call, and it is not a question worth being wrong about while the car is sitting in a driveway.

What should you do to the car before you sell it?

Less than you think, and one thing more than you expect.

Do not spend the estate's money on the car. What goes into it before a sale does not come back out of the price, and on an estate car it is not even your money to gamble with. If you want the detail on what does and does not move a price, that is its own question.

What is worth doing is finding things. Both keys if there are two. The service records, wherever they were kept. And a proper pass through the interior, because a car that was not emptied by its owner is a car nobody has emptied.

That last one takes longer than people expect. Glovebox, door pockets, under both front seats, the boot floor, the visor. Dash cams get left behind constantly, and so do things that have nothing to do with the car. Do it at home and at your own pace rather than in front of somebody waiting to leave.

How do you keep an estate sale from going wrong?

You are in an unusual position. You are selling a car you may never have driven, to a buyer you have no way of judging, with money that is not yours. Two things cover most of the risk.

• Take the payment the way we take it, inside a bank with the buyer beside you, rather than in a driveway. Private sale scams and how to spot a curber cover who you are dealing with and what the fake draft looks like.
• Say plainly what you do not know. Nobody expects you to carry the service history of a car you did not own. Describe what you can verify, say the rest is unknown, and let the buyer pull the history report. Not knowing is fine. A guess that turns out to be wrong is not.

How does DriveOffer pay when there is a loan on the car?

We come to you, we pay by bank draft, and we go into the bank with you rather than handing it over in a driveway. If there is a loan on the car we pay the lender directly as part of the sale and pay the balance to the estate, so nobody has to produce the payoff first.

The part worth knowing while you are waiting on paperwork is that there is no clock on any of it. Getting a number commits you to nothing and it does not lapse in a week. We have bought a car almost a year after the offer was first given, and as long as the number still holds when you come back, it stands. So you can find out what the car is worth now, while everything else is being sorted, instead of starting from scratch once the estate is settled.

None of this is the hard part of what you are doing. It is a car, it has a value, and it can be dealt with in an afternoon once the paperwork behind it is straight.