The application that actually moves a Mississippi title into the buyer's name - and a form you will not find on dor.ms.gov, because it is prepared at the designated agent's counter rather than filled in at a kitchen table. In a private sale that counter is the buyer's county Tax Collector. The seller never signs it, but the assigned certificate you hand over is its main exhibit, and the duplicate copy the buyer keeps becomes their permit to drive while Clinton processes the title.
Written against 78-002 (not published online), issued under Mississippi Administrative Code 35.VII.5.01, which requires it signed by the buyer and the designated agent. Third-party form sites sell fillable 78-002 downloads, and they are scans of old counter stock. The Department publishes current editions of every form a seller fills in themselves; this one it keeps at the counter precisely because a designated agent has to co-sign it. If a website is charging for it, that is the tell.
There is no download link for the 78-002 here because there is not one anywhere - Motor Vehicle Services does not publish it. The card below explains where it does come from.
The Department of Revenue does not publish the 78-002 in its form library - all twenty-eight title forms and twenty-three registration forms in its form search were enumerated and it is not among them. It is a counter document: the regulation requires it signed by the buyer of the vehicle and the designated agent, dealers submit it through the Department's e-Services, and the copies in circulation on form-mill sites are old scans. There is accordingly no agency PDF from which to render a filled-in example, and a scan from anywhere else would be somebody's stale edition.
| On the form | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| The vehicle, from the assigned certificate | Vehicle identification number, year, make, model and body style, copied from the title you assigned rather than from the windshield. The Department's registration instructions add an odometer disclosure statement to the pile for a vehicle arriving on an out-of-state title. |
| The owner or owners | The buyer's full legal name and address - and the conjunction between two buyers matters for the rest of the vehicle's life, because OR lets one survivor sign alone later where AND demands a probated will. A certificate is issued with at most two owners' names and one address. |
| The lien, if the buyer is borrowing | The lender's details, with an electronic lien option - the application gained a select electronic lien answer when the e-lien system arrived, and lienholders with a federal EIN must release electronically within 14 days of satisfaction. |
| The signatures | Two of them, and neither is yours: the buyer's, and the designated agent's. That pairing is the whole verification apparatus of a Mississippi transfer - the regulation requires the application signed by the buyer of the vehicle and the designated agent. |
| The duplicate copy | Handed back to the buyer at the counter, and worth more than a receipt: it will serve as a permit for the operation of the motor vehicle described in the application until the Department either issues the certificate of title or refuses it. |
There is no 78-002 to read: Motor Vehicle Services does not publish it, so nothing on this page describes its contents beyond what the agency itself says about it — that is here — and what is on the Mississippi Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Services pages. This is plain-language help with a form, not legal advice, and where our wording and the agency's differ, theirs governs.
Back to all Mississippi seller paperwork, or what selling a car in Mississippi involves.