Watch car registration deadline when transfering plates

by Jeff Johnson

Apparently, when you transfer your plates to a new vehicle in New Jersey, the new vehicle takes on the registration cycle of your old vehicle.

So, say your old vehicle's registration is due to expire in January, but you buy a new vehicle in November and transfer the plates from the old vehicle. The new vehicle's registration expires two months later, in January, not a year later as you might expect. The moral of the story is always renew your registration on your vehicle immediately upon receiving a reminder in the mail, even if you expect to sell the vehicle before the registration actually expires.

This was one I found out the hard way—and made Princeton Township $54 richer in the process.

Last November, when my 1992 Honda Accord's rear bumper was hanging from one last rusty hook, I decide it was time to move those license plates to a newer vehicle.

The kind folks at the car dealership took care of the paperwork and even called one of their techs over their public address system to come use a cordless electric screwdriver to remove the plates from the Honda and attach them to my new vehicle. My fingers were spared even more strain when they handled the registration on my behalf, which you can do in New Jersey, and called me a couple of weeks later to pick up the registration card at the dealership.

Fast forward to March of this year, when, on my way to take my not-quite-four-year-old to his first dental appointment, I was busted.

Just across the border into Princeton Township, I saw the unmarked patrol car sitting just off the road ready to pounce. I'm not a lead-footed driver, but this was on a downhill—so of course my heart rate went up a bit.

And then it flew off the chart upon seeing those blue and red lights in the rear view.

Apparently, Princeton Township police are quite tech-savvy these days, and the officer explained that her dashboard-mounted laptop had noted that my vehicle was not showing up as registered in the state database.

Since I'd just bought the vehicle in November, I dumbly didn't check the expiration date when I received the registration, assuming it must be valid for a year. I remember receiving a reminder in the mail for the old vehicle just a few days before I traded it in, but had thrown it away. After all, why renew the registration on a vehicle you're going to sell in a few days, anyway? (Clue Number 2 should have been that the transfer registration only cost me something like $4.50, but that clue got lost in the much larger price of the car.)

Since this isn't a political blog, we'll set aside our musings about how low the crime rate in Princeton Township must be for their finest officers to be sitting by the roadside scanning random license plates. Instead, we'll look on the bright side and say—with all truthfulness—that I'm glad Princeton Township got to practice some basic detective skills on me rather than have me find out after getting into an accident or having the vehicle stolen that it wasn't actually registered.

In other words, I'll count my blessings that I got off with a $54 non-moving violation.

Plus my son had a good story to tell everyone that day. Of course, the first words out of his mouth at the dentist's officer were "there was a police car, and the police lady stopped my daddy, because, she said, my daddy didn't have the right papers for his car."

Well said, kid.