AnalysisIn Montana, if an applicant for a certificate of title cannot provide the Motor Vehicle Division of the Department of Justice with the certificate of title that assigns the prior owner's interest in the motor vehicle, trailer, semitrailer, pole trailer, camper, motorboat, personal watercraft, sailboat, or snowmobile to the applicant, the Department may issue a certificate of title if the applicant submits an affidavit that meets the requirements of the law, as specified in MCA 61-3-208. Until the enactment of House Bill 165, that affidavit had to be subscribed and sworn to before an officer authorized to administer oaths and affirmations. House Bill 165 removes the notarization requirement for these vehicle transfers. The new law also removes the notarization requirement for voluntary vehicle transfers between individuals. Thus, Montana, one of the last holdouts requiring vehicle titles to be notarized, joins most other states in no longer requiring notarization of vehicle titles.
The bill was touted as a way to make it easier for people in rural Montana to transfer vehicles, given that a Notary may be more difficult to find than in most other places. It also was seen as a step toward making vehicle transfers paperless.
After the enactment of House Bill 165, the Legislature passed and the Governor approved Senate Bill 380, which left the acknowledgment requirement intact for vehicle title transfers between individuals in MCA 61-3-220(b)(2), the same subsection repealed in its entirety by House Bill 165, but struck Notaries Public from the list of individuals who could take the acknowledgment.
Read House Bill 165.