Victim of Title Jumping in Louisiaa
My 17 yo son bought a car and was given a title with erasures on it and not notarized. He didn't know any better and was too impatient to involve his all knowing and wise parents. However the seller does buy and sell used cars and should have known better.
The seller just bought the car from a dealership and erased his name and put my sons name in his place. Since he never registered it he cannot get a duplicate title and will not contact the dealership for help. We have contacted the dealership but they will not help us and said that they did their part when they sold it to the other guy.
The front of the title still has the original owners name on it. The back of the title for assignment of title has the dealership as the buyer and the original owner RJ as a seller. but in that same section the buyer is erased and my son's name was put in there. But my son did not even buy it from RJ or the dealership, he bought it from someone the dealership sold it to. Honestly I'm so confused about this I don't even think I'm making sense but it looks like the title was jumped twice.
- RJ sold it to the dealership
- Dealership sold it to JB
- JB sold it to my 17 yo son (he will be 18 in two weeks)
If the correct chain of command was followed the dealership would be the first assignment, jb would be the first reassignment by licensed dealer (which was blank.)
I apologize in advance if I sound very unorganized. Seems like every time I take a better look at this I realize something different. A notary told us all we needed was an "Affidavit of Correction" and since my son is 17 I would have to be the buyer anyway as the adult. So we went to this notary and she put my information as the buyer in the blank section which is "first reassignment by license dealer" and copied the seller's name from the front of the title.
The man my son bought it from said he will give him his money back and just take the car back but he will have to resell it first and just have whoever buys it give my son the money. Either way I want to make sure that we are protected because all we want to do is just cancel the sale and get his money back. We tried to register it and the tag agency told us we need the duplicate title with the proper chain of custody and a bill of sale on the dealership's letterhead (which obviously isn't going to happen).
Can I just write "void returned to seller" on the title where I am the notarized buyer?
The car has been sitting here in my driveway since the day of purchase and has not been driven. I did put insurance on it before we went to register it but since it can't be registered i canceled the insurance. In the meantime my son continues to pay for Lyft to get back and forth to work.
My son has worked for months and payng $20 a day for Lyft home while trying to save for a car, just to now have one that he can't even drive because someone saw him as an easy mark. He is in tears and I need to fix it.