My Ride is Now Legal

I had a wonderful experience today at the tax collector’s office, better known in other states as the DMV.

No one has a good time at the DMV, or so you would think. But I did. I was there for at least two hours, and I was thrilled to be there.

Today I got back on the job of getting my dad’s estate probated. I redrafted my initial filing, and I tried to file it using the state’s court efiling system. It was no use. The correct options simply did not exist on the website. I had to call the court clerk so a lady there could walk me through it. Annoying, but this is how courts are.

While I was talking to her, she asked if I was doing formal probate or summary administration. I had assumed that the correct thing was to get probate started and then petition for summary administration but oh, no. I was wrong. They want you to do it up front. Or at least this lady does, and since she rules the office, that’s good enough for me.

Filing lawsuits is very straightforward; I can file a lawsuit in half an hour. Probate, which should be simpler, is full of irritating twists and turns. I am very open to tips from people in the clerk’s office. They deal with this stuff every day.

I told her the estate was some junk and a used car, indicating it was suited to summary administration, and she told me I could transfer the title to the car at the tax collector’s office before fooling with probate. That blew my mind. It makes no sense at all. You can get a vehicle exempted from probate, but how can you do that if probate hasn’t started?

Here’s something I’ve learned: when someone who works in a courthouse tells you something wonderful, you don’t question it. You run with it. They can’t give you legal advice, but they can give you help with procedure, which can be just as valuable. I decided to see if I could get the title transferred at the tax collector’s office.

I called the tax collector, and they told me I could get the title changed with a non-certified copy of the will plus a death certificate. It seemed too good to be true.

I got these items together, and off I went. I also took a copy of the car’s registration, figuring it couldn’t hurt. It had the car’s VIN on it, and it might help the tax people find the car in their system.

Before I went in, I spoke God’s opposition to the difficulty of getting the job done. I spoke his help to me and his opposition to the spirits and people who were against me. I know how things work.

When I got there, the spirits of bureaucracy unleashed hell. I was supposed to have proof of insurance. I needed proof the estate was going to go through summary administration, which meant I needed a signed document from the lawyer doing the probate work. There was also some question as to whether they should give me the car without proof my mother was dead. What?

Basically, I needed a lot of stuff the lady on the phone didn’t mention. That’s my description of the natural problems I faced. As a Christian, I saw a wall of annoying strongholds.

I told the clerk I was an attorney, and I was handling the estate. This is true. I said I could stand there and write out a document, in longhand, stating that I intended to use summary administration. She went for it. In fact, she produced a form, and I signed it. HA. Sometimes it’s nice to be a lawyer.

She waited while I went to the car for the proof of insurance. Unbelievably, I hadn’t updated it. I had papers for 2017. Then I remembered…I had a phone. I signed into my dad’s insurance company’s website, and I pulled up his policy. I clicked the link to download a PDF of proof of insurance. It refused to display. There was no way to get it to work. After about 5 minutes of this, I went in to see if merely showing her the website would work.

She was way ahead of me. She produced a form saying the car was insured. I signed. God bless her.

Technically, there was a problem with the form. The FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation) is moderately insane, and they don’t make allowance for the fact that one person can’t insure another person’s property. The form said I was the owner, and that the car was insured. I explained, a bit too honestly, that it didn’t make sense to say I was the owner and had insurance when 1) I wasn’t the registered owner yet, and 2) the insurance was in my dad’s name, presumably making the estate the insured. There was also a possibility that the car was not insured; maybe the policy contained language saying the policy ended with the insured’s death.

In this particular universe, where the rules of logic apply, there was no way to sign that form and be totally comfortable about it, but I had come to understand that the system was screwed up, so I signed. I looked at it this way: under the law, I became the owner of the car at the instant my dad died. That’s how wills work. Registration is proof of ownership, but ownership itself transfers at death. I really was the owner, and as far as I knew, it was okay for the estate to have insurance on the car.

If car policies terminated with death, it would cause no end of problems, and I don’t think the government would stand for it. What if you have a fatal accident, and your car is drivable, and your brother comes to drive it home? Is the estate supposed to pay $500 for a tow? I doubt it.

Whatever. I may be mistaken, but I’m not a perjurer, and that’s what counts.

The clerk looked up my FDOT account, and she found I had a credit for a license tag I didn’t use. She did that all on her own, without being prompted. I didn’t have to pay for a new tag. Sweet.

On top of that, she gave me candy.

You may be wondering why all this took two hours. You would have to ask the FDOT. The clerk spent a great deal of time staring at her computer, waiting for information to come up and entering data. It was ridiculous.

On top of that, I renewed my driver’s license while I was there, and it took a while because I had to sign an affidavit saying I refused to be an organ donor. I have been in enough hospitals to know there is a culture of death in those places, and I am not anxious to have a pillow put over my face so some stranger can have my tonsils. I would rather have a kid go without a kidney a while longer than be unplugged prematurely by an SJW in scrubs. Disease and death are natural parts of life; being offed by overzealous doctors and nurses is not.

No one wants my organs or any other part of me right now. They never have, really. I find it hard to believe they will want them after I’m smooshed in a wreck.

In typical Christian fashion, I was hit with stronghold after stronghold, but God showed me a way through each one, and he gave me favor (which I prayed for).

When I got home, I got on the computer and added the car to my insurance policy. Now, no matter what my status was on the drive home, I am legit.

The estate has been reduced, basically, to a bunch of junk you might expect to see at a garage sale. My dad didn’t have a lot of personal property. Not after I threw out his awful furniture and 1970’s wardrobe back in Miami.

I am very happy. Two hours at the tax collector’s office beat months of probate, any day. I did not want to involve the car in probate because I fully intend to use it. My other four-wheeler is a giant diesel truck, and it’s not nearly as convenient. After driving the truck for 8 years, the SUV I inherited feels as nimble as a go-kart. I love parking it.

Far as I can tell, the transfer is legal and final. If the clerk and I made any errors, they can be fixed by the court.

My impression is that no one in the government really wants to be involved any more than they have to. I don’t think they plan to put me on the rack and question everything I do. I have a one-beneficiary will and a tiny estate. There is no one to cheat.

If I had filed in Miami, I probably would have been dealing with an impatient clerical with little interest in helping me. Some of the courthouse clericals there are okay, some are on the useless side, some are resentful and passive-aggressive, and some are like rabid animals. I don’t think anyone there would have been helpful at all. As for the tax collectors, I don’t even want to think about it. I would be lucky to get one who spoke English. You know what they call you when your name is Stephen? “Teabag.” Either that or “Estefeng.”

I’ve seen some real beauties in the federal courthouse in Miami. I dealt with one clerk who appeared to be furious that I had shown up. She had an inexplicable expression of hatred on her face, and she snapped at me when I talked to her, as if I were asking pointed questions about her sexual history. I also had a run-in with a federal marshal whose gossiping nearly made me late filing a document; I had given myself an hour to make the 20-minute drive, but I had gotten caught in a traffic jam. When I told him I was in a hurry because my client was facing a deadline, he decided the best move was to give me a slow lecture explaining why running his mouth by the metal detector was more important than filing a document on time. I wrote the chief judge about that jewel.

What a difference it makes, living in an area with nice Christian people, or, more to the point, not in Miami. What a miserable hole of a city.

I can never thank God enough for getting me out of there.

Things are going well. I credit God. My prayer life is going better, and even though I love and miss my dad, I was carrying him in the supernatural, and it held me back.

Never, ever get too close to an unsaved person. It may take you years to get out of the pit. It may well be that if I had avoided getting too close to my dad, I would have been stronger spiritually and could have helped him get salvation decades earlier.

He will be the last one. No more unequal yokings. You can be a friendly acquaintance I see from time to time. You can be an old friend or relative I don’t spend much time with. No problem. But if you’re not with Jesus, you can’t be closely involved with me. Not in business, and not in my personal life. It causes too many problems, and if I show that I haven’t learned my lesson, God will make me regret it.