NSW Car sales for family members.

[Courtney Hopkins]

Hi,
Don’t know if I’m posting in the right forum but here goes. I’m a student athlete and am currently studying over seas on scholarship. I’ve been overseas for around 5 months, but upon returning I have found out that my father has ‘sold’ my car. I paid my father $3000.00 for it, and worked on his farm without pay to own it. I had the car under my name, but I was paying a large amount of insurance on it whilst over seas. This is where it gets tricky. My father managed to convince me that if I put it in his name he would pay the insurance, look after it, and give me a car when returning home after college. I didn’t sign the papers to have the car registered in his name but someone else in my family did. Now my father is refusing to hold up his end of the deal, and I no longer have a car to drive. I have messages of exactly what the agreement was. He has failed to do his part, in addition I wasn’t the one to sign the papers in the first place so is his ownership valid. Is there any thing I can do?

Thanks.

 

[Scruff]

This more of a criminal law matter rather than consumer law. What you should do depends on how far you are willing to take it - in other words, are you willing to get the Police involved? If you are, then in short, the car has been stolen and you should report it.

In regard to "signing the papers", I assume you are talking about the transfer of registration. If someone else signed your name, then that's a criminal offence. If they signed some other name claiming they had your authority to do so when they didn't, then that is also a criminal offence.

At a bare minimum, you're looking at theft or fraud; forgery; and false and misleading documents. Making matters even worse, is the fact that false information was provided to a government agency (RMS), which is something the law takes very seriously. Additionally, it is also likely that false information has been provided to at least one insurance company (to obtain a greenslip).