For decades a Montana sale ended at a notary's desk, and on 1 October 2025 that stopped. HB 165 struck the acknowledgement requirement out of the transfer statute, titles printed since then come with no notary box on them at all, and older titles are accepted with that box left empty. What did not change is the rest of it: you pull your plates off the car before the keys change hands because a statute says so, you file nothing afterwards because the division publishes nothing to file, and the buyer has forty days to put the car in their own name at a county treasurer's counter. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Montana Department of Justice, Motor Vehicle Division, Vehicle Services Bureau's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Montana titleThe four blocks of a Montana title a sale actually touches, and the box that vanished from the form in October 2025.Open the walkthrough →The division's Buying & Selling Vehicles in Montana leaflet, dated June 2026, tells a seller that mileage must be disclosed on any vehicle newer than nine years, and repeats it under Title Tips. That is the federal rule that expired at the end of 2020, and it disagrees with the division's own current form, its own website and its own statute. The 3/23 salvage receipt carries the same fossil - conforming odometer statement (9 years and newer). Work from the form in your hand, not the leaflet.
MCA 61-3-206(4) is the version everything current agrees with, and the MV90A prints it on its first line: required and applies to vehicles 20 years old and newer, model years before 2011 are exempt. So a 2011-or-newer car discloses until it turns twenty; a 2010-or-older car discloses nothing at all, whatever its mileage.
Model year 2011 or newer, less than twenty years old: Disclose. On a title printed with an odometer certification the reading goes there in whole miles; where the document has no space for it, MCA 61-3-216(2)(e) sends you to a separate MV90A carrying the same information.
Model year 2010 or older: Exempt, and the manual says so twice: a vehicle model year 2010 or older, odometer reading is not required for titling transactions. It sits in the same exempt list as trailers and campers, which are not self-propelled.
Over 16,000 pounds gross weight rating: Exempt whatever the year. Kilometres are not exempt: the manual has the seller cross out the word miles, write kilometers, and have both parties initial the change, after which Montana prints the title in kilometres.
Montana Department of Justice, Motor Vehicle Division, Vehicle Services Bureau, odometer disclosure
You, the seller: Sign in the assignment section where the word Seller appears, and every name printed on the face signs there individually. The manual is exact about what individually means: a signature cannot appear as John and Mary Smith, it must be John Smith and Mary Smith. Since 1 October 2025 nothing about that signature is acknowledged, sworn or stamped - you sign it at the kitchen table and the transfer is complete.
The buyer: The buyer's name and address go on the title too, and Montana law makes that the seller's job rather than the buyer's: it is the seller's responsibility to complete the buyer's information on the certificate of title. From the date of sale the buyer has forty days to apply for a title and register the car at the county treasurer's office in their own county.
AND or OR. Montana does not ask you to choose a connector, because the statute chooses for you. MCA 61-3-202(4): if the names and addresses of more than one owner are listed on the certificate of title, joint ownership with right of survivorship, and not as transfer on death, is presumed. The words themselves need not be printed - the manual notes the JTROS relationship does not have to be shown on the title.
While both owners are alive both sign, and there is one useful exception: if a two-name title is being transferred to one of those two owners, only the owner giving up their interest signs off, and the one staying completes the application section on the back. Everywhere else, a missing co-owner signature is what stops the counter.
Two sentences from the division govern every pen stroke you make. From its selling page: white-out or attempts to erase or scratch out entries void the title. From the manual: if an erasure or whiteout is on a title, the title is void and the owner will need to obtain a replacement title, and information corrected with white-out correction ink is treated as an erasure. The repair is a $10.30 MV7 and a wait of up to four weeks.
Montana Department of Justice, Motor Vehicle Division, Vehicle Services Bureau, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
Four documents cover a straightforward Montana sale: the bill of sale that is also your only record of it, the buyer's title application, the odometer sheet for a car young enough to need one, and the beneficiary designation that decides where the car goes if you never sell it.
Montana perfects security interests on an electronic record rather than by holding your title. These are the three forms that put a lender on, move one across, or let one take the car back.
Lost, wrong, whited-out, or never issued in Montana at all. Five forms cover every version of a title that is not in your hand and correct.
A signature that cannot be made in the room. Montana kept two routes open after it abolished the notary - a power of attorney, and a remote online notarisation that stands in for the title's own release section.
One affidavit clears a small estate without probate; one statement proves a trustee can sign. Both are about establishing who is entitled to sign the title, not about the sale.
Hail, a total loss, a VIN that will not read. Five forms for a car whose paperwork has to describe damage before it can describe a sale.
The plates came off the car at the moment of transfer. This is the form for asking the state for money back on anything you overpaid.
MCA 61-3-334 is one sentence long and has no exception in it: upon the transfer of ownership of a motor vehicle, trailer, semitrailer, or pole trailer, the transferor shall immediately remove the license plates. The division puts the reason in plain terms on its selling page - the plates belong to you, not the vehicle, and if you do not remove them you may be liable for any parking or traffic violations that happen after the sale.
The plates are not scrap. Ask the county treasurer about moving them onto another vehicle you own; MCA 61-3-335 is the transfer provision and the counter works it out against what is left on the registration. Montana light vehicles eleven years old or older can also be permanently registered, which is why some plates on a Montana driveway have no month sticker at all.
Handing them over with the car is the one gesture Montana sellers most often regret, and the division names the trap in the same breath: do not let the buyer drive the vehicle home with the promise that they will return the plates. Until they title the car it is still your registration number on the back of it.
So how does the buyer get home legally? Not on your plates. MCA 61-3-317 says the car may not be operated during the forty-day grace period unless a temporary registration permit is issued and displayed, and MCA 61-3-224 sets that permit at $19.50, running forty days or until the vehicle is registered, taped to the rear where the plate goes. A classic-car plate or a personalized plate is the single set that can follow the car - and only if you file an MV100 relinquishing all rights to them, because, as the division says, the registration fees alone will not transfer the plates to the buyer.
Most states hand a seller a form to file within a fortnight. Montana hands you a sentence saying the opposite: when you have sold the vehicle, you can ignore its annual registration renewal notice that might still come in the mail, and you do not need to notify the County Treasurer's motor vehicle office that you sold the vehicle. There is no notice of sale, no release of liability, no deadline and no fee, because there is no filing.
What stands in its place is your own copy. The division asks you to keep documentation of the sale with the buyer's name and address, and spells out what counts: a photocopy of the reassigned title, or a document carrying the year, make, VIN, name, address, driver licence number, purchase price and date of sale - which is precisely the MV24 Bill of Sale, offered for your convenience. Its FAQ explains the stakes in one line: private sales are not reported to the State of Montana until the purchaser properly titles and registers the vehicle, and without proof of sale you can be held liable for any parking tickets, fines or fees the purchaser runs up.
Cancel the insurance, but photograph the title first.
The division's own instruction is to cancel the vehicle's insurance policy once it is sold. The order matters: once the assigned title leaves your hand you have no record of the transfer at all unless you made one, and Montana will not have a record either until the buyer walks into a treasurer's office - which they have forty days to do, and a $10 penalty says some of them do not. Montana MVD, Tips for Selling a Vehicle.
Register at the county treasurer's motor vehicle office in the buyer's county of residence within 40 days of the purchase. Nothing to work out between the two of you. Montana levies no sales tax on a private-party vehicle sale, so there is no tax form in this transaction and no figure for the seller to collect. What the buyer meets at the counter is MCA 61-3-321's registration fee, plus a county option tax on a light vehicle or a fee in lieu of tax on other vehicles, both set locally under MCA 61-3-537 - the division's fee estimator is the only honest way to price it. The title itself is $12.36 for a light vehicle, truck or bus of one ton or less and $10.30 for everything else, both already including the 3% administration fee MCA 61-3-111 adds. A security interest costs $8.24 to file. Miss the forty days and MCA 61-3-220(3) adds a $10 late penalty, payable by the buyer before registration.
What they need to bring:
Montana runs no emissions programme and no periodic safety inspection anywhere in its fifty-six counties, so an ordinary sale has no test to pass and no certificate to be current on. The one inspection in the titling system is the Level 1 VIN inspection on form MV20, done by a law enforcement officer, and a sale between two Montanans on an existing Montana title does not trigger it. It exists for cars arriving from out of state, for vehicles going through the break/bond process when they are ten years old or newer, for state-assigned VIN work, and for rebuilt salvage vehicles.
Montana Department of Justice, Motor Vehicle Division, Vehicle Services Bureau · figures and rules as of 2026-08-24. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Montana and the rest of the guides.