Vehicle Registration Plates of The United States - Life Cycle

Life Cycle

When a person moves to a new state, he or she is required to establish residency in the new state. The laws of the state will dictate the requirements for establishing residency and vehicle registration. The state will then issue a new plate or plates that must be attached to the vehicle. One prominent exception is active duty military service members; under federal law, they do not change their legal residence when they move to a new posting and are not obliged to re-register their vehicle with the state in which they are newly assigned. Students attending school in a state other than their own are also typically exempt from transferring their registration, although a few states consider all students to be residents for purposes of vehicle registration, insurance, and driver's licensing. A few other states, such as New York, allow, although do not require, out of state students to register their vehicles in state. Hawaii requires all persons moving to the state to register their vehicle to Hawaii. However, if your vehicle is still registered, you may keep those plates until they expire, but you have to get an out of state plate permit.

When a vehicle is sold, the disposition of the license plates depends on state law and varies by state. In some states, license plates are transferred with the vehicle to its new owner. In other states, the license plates remain with the seller, who may, for a fee, transfer the license plates and any unused portion of the current registration to a new vehicle. Some states issue a new plate whenever the car is sold.

The various states have different schemes for reissuing license plates, a process known as "replating". In some jurisdictions, plates are issued on a permanent basis and are not replaced unless the owner requests a new plate or that his or her existing plate be remade, or the plate becomes illegible. These jurisdictions include California, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Oregon. Other jurisdictions replate on a rolling basis, replacing a particular motorist's plate when it reaches a certain age. Jurisdictions employing a rolling replate program include Arkansas (plates reissued every eight years), Florida (ten years), Idaho (seven years), Minnesota (seven years), Texas (seven years), and Washington (seven years due to the five-year warranty on the reflective coating). Due to the Great Recession, Pennsylvania repealed its 1999 legislation in 2008 which required a replate every ten years, just in time to avoid the replate which would have been mandated by law for 2009.

Yet other jurisdictions may recall a particular series of plates for reissuance at regular or irregular intervals. This is particularly common in jurisdictions in which only one license plate series or design is valid at any given time. Optional-issue plates may or may not follow the same rules for replacement as standard-issue plates, depending on the jurisdiction.

New York usually replaces plates every 15 years. However, in 2009, due to the state's fiscal crisis, Gov. David Paterson decided to replace every plate in the state, with the oldest being 8 years. The mandatory plate replacement was rescinded in February 2010, but license plate fees were increased instead.

Mississippi replates every 5 years with the new plates to replace the old ones beginning in October.