Signing a Indiana title takes about ninety seconds once you know which boxes matter. Getting one of them wrong sends the buyer back to a BMV license branch and the car back to your driveway. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out an Indiana titleThe seller section, the odometer statement and the purchaser section - what goes in each, and the two that get filled in backwards.Open the walkthrough →There are exactly two exception boxes on State Form 43230 and neither of them is about how old the car is. Box 1 is the reading in excess of its mechanical limits - a five-digit instrument that has rolled past 99,999. Box 2 is the reading is NOT the actual mileage and should not be relied upon, printed under the words WARNING - ODOMETER DISCREPANCY. Ticking box 2 because a needle looks unreliable puts a permanent brand on the buyer's new title. Ticking nothing is the ordinary answer, because the printed sentence above the boxes already certifies the reading as actual mileage unless one of them is checked.
Where does an old car go, then? Nowhere on the Indiana form. The only exemption the BMV publishes in writing is on its own application checklist, and it is about the vehicle rather than its birthday: trailers and vehicles over 16,000 pounds are exempt. Age is a federal question, and the federal answer at 49 CFR 580.17 turns on the model year the vehicle was built in. A 2010 or earlier model drops out of disclosure ten years after the January of its model year. A 2011 or later model waits twenty, which means the first of them goes exempt in 2031 and not before.
Model year 2010 or older: Age-exempt everywhere in the United States, Indiana included. Nothing to write and nothing to tick.
Model year 2011 or newer: Not exempt, and a long way from it. Write the reading in whole miles - the box says Miles (no tenths) - and leave both numbered statements alone.
Over 16,000 pounds gross vehicle weight, or a trailer: Exempt under the BMV's own checklist and under the federal rule's first paragraph.
A vehicle that is not self-propelled: Exempt federally. In practice this is the towed half of a rig, not a car with a dead battery.
You, the seller: Fill in the seller section on the certificate itself: your printed name and signature, and the same for every other owner named on the title. Then the odometer statement, the date of sale, the purchase price, and the buyer's name and address in the purchaser section. All of that happens before the money moves, and all of it is on the title - there is no separate assignment sheet in Indiana unless the title is electronic.
The buyer: Takes the completed certificate to a BMV license branch with photo identification, fills in State Form 205, pays the sales tax on the price you wrote and the $15.00 title fee. Nothing comes back to you, and nothing is filed by you.
Nobody has to watch you sign it. Every signature block on every Indiana BMV vehicle form ends with the same undertaking: I swear or affirm that the information I have entered on this form is correct. I understand that making a false statement may constitute the crime of perjury. That is an oath, not an acknowledgement, and it needs no witness. Of the twenty-six BMV vehicle forms read for this section, one carries a notary certificate and says so in its instructions - the Limited Power of Attorney, State Form 1940, which must be notarized to be valid.
Which means the signing itself is the easy part of an Indiana sale and the writing is the hard part. Nobody at a notary's desk is going to catch a blank selling price or a misspelt buyer, and the BMV publishes two separate affidavits for cleaning up afterwards precisely because so many titles arrive with something missing.
The BMV's instruction is one sentence long: the certificate of title must be applied for within 45 days after the vehicle is purchased or otherwise acquired, and if the certificate of title is applied for after the 45 days have passed, an administrative penalty will be charged. The penalty is not on that page - it is on the fee chart, where the line reads Administrative penalty for late title, $30.00. Six and a half weeks is a long time for a car to sit in a driveway with your name still on the record, which is why the plate coming off matters more here than the calendar does.
Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One certificate, filled in on both halves before the money moves, and a buyer who has forty-five days to get to a branch with it.
Indiana has no standalone lien release form. What it has instead is a general-purpose affidavit for an individual lender, and a way of prising a title out of an out-of-state one.
A price left blank, a date written wrong, a seller who has vanished. Three different affidavits, and picking the wrong one costs a trip.
Signing through somebody else, or signing in a name the title does not quite carry. These are the two documents a branch will take in place of the owner at the counter.
One page, one death certificate and a hundred-thousand-dollar ceiling. Indiana moves a car out of a small estate without opening probate at all.
A total loss, a vehicle identification number nobody can read, and a car that is worth less than the paperwork to sell it.
Three sentences from the Buying & Selling a Vehicle page settle it. The seller should remove the license plate from the vehicle at the time of the transaction. The purchaser is responsible for obtaining a new certificate of title, registration and license plate. And then the part that surprises people who have sold a car in a surrender state: the Indiana BMV does not require the license plates of sold vehicles to be returned to the BMV.
So the plate goes in your boot, and it has a resale value of its own. The same page says the license plates of sold vehicles may be transferred to a different vehicle owned by that same person, and the fee chart prices that at $9.50 for a transfer, amend, duplicate or replacement plate, decal, or certificate of registration. Move it onto your next car at the branch and the registration you already paid for moves with it.
If you are not moving it, destroy it. The BMV's own FAQ answer is blunter than most: if you wish to dispose of a plate, you should manipulate the plate in such a way that renders it permanently unreadable and unusable. Do not leave it screwed to the car as a favour. Indiana has no notice of sale for you to file, so that plate is the last thing tying a stranger's driving to your name.
The buyer's legal way home without it is narrow and worth telling them about: 72 hours from the date of acquisition, by the most direct route, only to a place of storage, an emissions inspection station or a branch, and only with the certificate of title in the car showing that they own it.
Indiana publishes no notice of sale and no release of liability for a private seller. That is worth stating carefully because it is a negative, so here is how it was checked: the BMV's Title Forms index lists 44 forms under eleven headings, and not one of them reports a sale to the BMV. The Buying & Selling a Vehicle page gives a seller two instructions and neither is a filing. The BMV's own answer to the question I'm selling a vehicle, what do I need to fill out the title names the seller section, the odometer statement, the date of sale, the purchase price and the purchaser information, then adds that it is also important to remove the license plates - and stops there.
So the two things that actually end your involvement are the plate in your hand and a correctly completed certificate in the buyer's. Get the second one wrong and the buyer cannot title the car, which means your name stays on the record while they work out what to do about it. Get the plate wrong and your registration is still attached to a car you no longer control, for however long it takes them to walk into a branch - up to forty-five days, and longer if they are willing to pay the thirty dollars.
Photograph the completed title before it leaves your hands.
With nothing to file, your photograph is the whole of your evidence. Capture the seller section with every owner's signature, the odometer statement, the date of sale, the price and the buyer's printed name and address - one image, before the keys change hands. Then cancel the insurance the same day, because the registration is what the plate carries and the plate is now off the car. If you later need to prove when the record actually moved, State Form 53789 buys a certified record of the title out of BMV Central Office. Indiana State Form 53789, Request for Certified Records.
Register at a BMV license branch within 45 days of the purchase. Sales tax is the buyer's and it is collected by the branch, not by you. The BMV's rule for a private sale is that the sales tax must be paid at a branch when you apply for the Indiana certificate of title, and the Department of Revenue's bulletin on motor vehicle sales calls Indiana's the normal 7% rate. It is charged on the selling price written on the certificate. The title itself is $15.00, the same figure the fee chart uses for issuing, duplicating or replacing one. A speed title adds $25.00 and gets it couriered rather than posted; an ordinary one takes up to 21 calendar days to arrive. Plates and registration are a separate errand at the same counter.
What they need to bring:
Indiana's vehicle inspection programme covers Lake and Porter counties in the north-west corner of the state and nowhere else. It attaches to registration, not to titling, and the BMV asks for the report number on its registration checklist rather than on anything a seller signs. Nothing about it stops you selling, and the answer to a buyer's question depends on where the buyer lives.
A different inspection does touch the title, and it is not an emissions one: any vehicle coming in on another state's title needs a Physical Inspection of a Vehicle or Watercraft to confirm the VIN, free at any branch or up to five dollars if a police officer does it. Indiana BMV, Vehicle Title and/or Registration Application Checklist.
Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Indiana and the rest of the guides.