If you sell a vehicle, you must do immediate transfer of ownership in the Automotive Property Registry to exempt yourself from civil liability towards other people.
However, this situation, which sounds quite logical and is essential after the operation, is not always carried out in practice.
Many times when a person decides to sell their used vehicle, they hand it over with the signed documentation in exchange for a sum of money or another vehicle. without leaving a record anywhere of the operation and much less who is receiving it.
In other cases, the buying party is the one who asks the selling party not to make the transfer because they have some legal impediment to having assets in their name and they carry out the operation without leaving any formal record.
In this type of vehicle sales, it must be kept in mind that in the event of a road accident there could be civil liability of the seller if the timely sale report is not made, since he is the owner in the Automotive Property Registry.
This has the meaning of providing evidence to those who suffered damages as a result of the actions of the vehicle and intends to claim compensation.
Although there are cases in which judicial rulings understand that the registered owner does not have a responsibility, they are generally specific situations in which could be reliably demonstrated that he did not have possession of the vehicle.
A similar situation also occurs in the case of traffic or patent violations, since if the transfer of ownership was not made at the time of the sale, it is often very difficult to prove that the vehicle belongs to another person.
And bringing this into the orbit of the buyer could give rise to another more extreme situation. Since if the transfer is not made, the seller continues to be the registered owner, so You could have your vehicle repossessed or seized and having to face a trial to recover what was paid in the sale plus damages.
For these reasons, which were just some examples of many situations that can occur to the detriment of the buyer, the seller or both, it is highly recommended, when making a purchase and sale, to first request a domain report to find out if there is any type embargo, pledge or some other obstacle.
Once the ownership status of the vehicle is reliably known, it should be immediately complete the transfer to avoid all the inconveniences that not doing so brings.
It is made clear that the specific case must always be evaluated and this note does not imply advice on the specific situation but rather general guidelines.