Nebraska writes the whole private sale onto one face of one document. The seller's section, the purchaser's section and the odometer certification all sit in the lower half of the front of the current certificate, a county treasurer issues the buyer's new title for $10, and the state never asks you to notarise anything or to file a notice that the car is gone. What it does instead is punish the shortcuts: an open title is confiscated on sight, and skipping the title in your own name before selling is a felony. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles, Driver and Vehicle Records Division's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Nebraska titleThe three sections of the certificate that carry a Nebraska sale, and the one signature order that cannot be fixed with initials.Open the walkthrough →Ask around a courthouse and you may be quoted the ten-year rule, because the odometer chapter of the County Treasurer's Manual the DMV distributes to the counties still works its example as 2015 minus 10. That rule ended on the last day of 2020. Under the current one a 2011 model needed a disclosure in 2021 and will keep needing one until it turns twenty - so cars that would have been exempt for years under the old arithmetic are still certifying mileage today.
The line the DMV's website and Neb. Rev. Stat. s. 60-192(2) both draw: model year 2010 or older is exempt outright, and model year 2011 or newer needs the certification until the vehicle is more than twenty years old. The certification itself lives in the Odometer Certification section printed on the title - since 1999 Nebraska refuses a separate mileage sheet except in five narrow cases, the commonest being a decedent's vehicle whose title cannot be found.
Model year 2011 or newer, less than twenty years old: The reading goes in the odometer section on the face of the certificate, whole miles, with one of the printed notations: Actual, Not Actual, or Exceeds Mechanical Limits.
Model year 2010 or older: Exempt. And exemption is a one-way door in Nebraska: once a title records the odometer as Exempt, no future title for that vehicle may carry a mileage again.
Over 16,000 pounds gross rated capacity, or a motorcycle built with no odometer: Exempt whatever the year. Kilometres are not exempt - a metric cluster has to be converted to miles by the seller and acknowledged by the buyer, at 0.621 miles per kilometre.
Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles, Driver and Vehicle Records Division, odometer disclosure
You, the seller: Every name printed on the face of the certificate signs in the Seller's section, the date of sale gets recorded there, and you complete the Odometer Certification section before the pen leaves your hand. Nothing is notarised. But the order is absolute: the buyer's name, address and signature must go into the Purchaser's section at the time of purchase, because a title signed by the seller with an empty purchaser block is an open title - illegal to hold, confiscated by the county, the DMV or law enforcement when it surfaces.
The buyer: The buyer takes the completed certificate to a county treasurer, pays the sales tax and a $10 title fee, and has thirty days from the date of purchase to do it. Registration happens in the county where the car will be kept, with proof of insurance in original form.
AND or OR. Nebraska decides survivorship with a single word on the face of the title. Names joined by OR, or carrying the words With Rights Of Survivorship, let the survivor sell alone with a death certificate. Names joined by AND, without those words, mean a county judge decides in probate who owns the car before anyone can sell it.
Every listed owner signs the Seller's section either way while all are living - Nebraska's connector rule governs what happens at a death, not how many signatures a sale takes. And one relative is specifically barred from signing for another: the DMV's transfer page warns that spouses cannot sign as an agent for one another on the certificate itself, even though one spouse may sign the title application for both.
Read the whole face of the title before writing anything, because the department's rule has no forgiveness in it: if a signature is placed in the wrong place or an alteration of any kind is made, the title is mutilated and the seller will be required to obtain a Duplicate Certificate of Title before the sale can proceed. A mutilated certificate is surrendered to the county treasurer, the replacement is $14, and the buyer waits while it happens.
Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles, Driver and Vehicle Records Division, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
Four documents cover an ordinary Nebraska sale: the tax statement the seller must complete, the bill of sale that rides home in the unplated car, the buyer's title application, and the separate odometer sheet the state accepts in only five situations.
Nebraska titles with liens exist only as electronic records at the DMV. These two lender forms are how a paper certificate comes back into your hands - one releases the lien, the other just prints the title.
Lost, or mutilated by one stray mark. Nebraska has no correction affidavit, so the $14 duplicate is the cure for both, from any county.
One page, no notary, and since 2024 dealers are barred from using it except in two narrow cases. It appoints anyone you trust to sign the transfer in your place.
Small estates skip probate with one notarised affidavit under s. 30-24,125 - but the title can only issue to the successor, never straight to whoever is buying the car.
A junked Nebraska vehicle moves on its own bill of sale, notarised, and only to be parted out or scrapped - putting it back on the road is a different fight entirely.
The registration expired the moment you signed. These two applications are how the unused months of tax and fees come back - one for a sold car, one for a dead one.
Nebraska ties registration to the owner, and Neb. Rev. Stat. s. 60-395 ends it at the moment of transfer: the registration shall expire, and the registered owner may - by returning the registration certificate, the license plates and the validation decals - receive a refund of the unused fees and taxes. The DMV's refund page sets the clock: the Application for Refund, the plates, the registration and the decals go to the county treasurer where the car is registered within sixty days of the sale.
What comes back is not just the $15 registration fee. Nebraska's annual bill is mostly motor vehicle tax and motor vehicle fee, both prorated by the unexpired months, and the same application claims all three. Sell in the month the registration was issued and that month pays nothing; buy a replacement at the same counter and the refund converts to a credit against the new car's taxes and fees on the spot.
Handing the plates to the buyer does them no good and costs you the refund. The plates were registered to you, the registration certificate names you, and s. 60-399 bars displaying a plate or registration other than as assigned - so the buyer cannot ride on your registration, and every month the plates sit in their garage is a month off your refund.
So how does the buyer get the car home? Nebraska's answer is startling to out-of-staters: with no plates at all. The county manual spells it out for private-party purchases - no In-Transit decal exists for them, a homemade one cannot be used, and the vehicle may be driven with no decal or plates until proper registration is obtained, for up to thirty days, so long as proof of ownership and insurance rides in the car. A buyer who already has plates from a previous vehicle may run those instead for the same thirty days.
Nebraska publishes no notice of sale and no release-of-liability filing. We checked the whole forms index - 186 PDFs - and both county manuals: no such form exists, and no statute sets a deadline for one. The transaction the state watches instead is the refund. When you surrender the plates, decals and registration certificate with the Application for Refund, the county cancels the registration on the record, which is as close as Nebraska comes to being told the car is gone.
What actually protects a Nebraska seller is the paper trail the sale itself creates: a fully assigned certificate with the purchaser's name, address and signature completed at the time of purchase, the date of sale recorded in the Seller's section, and your signed copy of the bill of sale or Form 6 kept with your records. The buyer's felony exposure does the rest - a consumer who transfers ownership without first titling, registering and paying tax in their own name commits a Class IV felony under the dealer directives the DMV and the Department of Revenue publish jointly - so the incentive to leave the car floating in your name is carried by the criminal code rather than by anything you file.
Turn the plates in before you drop the insurance.
The refund application requires the plates, the registration and the decals to reach the county treasurer within sixty days of the sale, and every full month that passes before they do is a month of motor vehicle tax, motor vehicle fee and registration fee you cannot claim back. Cancel the insurance first and forget the plates and you are holding live registration on a car you no longer own or insure. Nebraska DMV, registration refunds and credits.
Register at any county treasurer's office (register in the county where the car is kept) within 30 days of the purchase. Nebraska collects sales tax on a private-party sale, and the buyer pays it at the county treasurer's counter before the car can be registered - the state rate of 5.5% plus whatever local rate applies, worked out from the Form 6 you both signed, with a $1 fee per new tire on top. Past thirty days the county adds penalty and interest at the statutory rate. The title itself is $10, a lien notation is $7 more if there is a lender, and the annual registration stack - the $15 registration fee, the motor vehicle tax and the motor vehicle fee, both driven by the vehicle's original list price and age - lands at first registration.
What they need to bring:
Nebraska runs no emissions programme and no periodic safety inspection in any of its ninety-three counties, so there is no test to pass and no sticker to be current on before a sale. The one inspection in the titling system is a $10 identification check by the county sheriff - a comparison of the VIN on the vehicle against the ownership papers, with the odometer noted while the hood is up - and an ordinary in-state sale never triggers it: the DMV's own exemption list starts with any transaction where a Nebraska Certificate of Title is presented. It exists for cars arriving from out of state, assembled vehicles, and salvage cars being inspected up to a Previously Salvaged title, and even then the certificate it produces expires after ninety days.
Nebraska DMV, vehicle inspections.
Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles, Driver and Vehicle Records Division · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Nebraska and the rest of the guides.