Old Traffic Tickets

[MtnGal]

If this is how Homeland Security works we are in deep s&%#!

On another board there was a thread about Homeland Security and DL. So to renew my DL I took my SS and BC as some said they had to do.

In 2008 all states DMV were tied together over the computer. It seems I had a hold on renewing my NC DL license from a hold in PA. I haven't lived in PA for 30 years. I was given a phone number to call PA with an ID#.

PA said the hold was actually from a MD traffic citation in 1979. They gave me another phone number for MD and another ID#. I spent two hours calling 5 different places in MD which could not find a citation from 1979.

I had to write a letter to a district court in MD - no fax allowed - so MD can send me a letter to send to PA so they will release the hold so I can renew my NC DL.

I also had to send PA a letter - no fax allowed- telling them I have not lived in PA for 30 years and do not have a PA DL which NC took 30 years ago when I first got a NC DL.

Yet all states DMV are now connected via computer per Homeland Security!

[glass half empty]

No wonder the govt can't figure out BO(zo)'s birth certificate. It all clear to me now. They have no idea WTF they are doing!:twisted:

[Vipper]

I went through this the year before last... Had to overnight police form's and all kinds of things to Springfield, IL and GA... My ex-husband's 15 year old girl friend at the time of our parting used my ID's to get a DL and a bunch of other things. She wasn't legally old enough to drink or go to bars... I was 21 at the time. She later married him two or three times I lost track, but she keep using my SS # and DL she had issued in IL... I had a FL DL until 10 years ago when I got the WI one. Had not had an IL one since I was 21. She cleared out an old IRA I had set up she had the paperwork (I left with nothing but my son and never looked back even for my things) and she forged my signature, got tickets all over the place on a DL with my name... When I divorced I went back to my maiden name legally, but they merged all of the married names on the computers in IL that year. SO her past came back to haunt me when I went to the WI DMV to renew my DL... The Courts in GA were really helpful, the Fed's wanted me to press charges to have her thrown in jail and all I wanted was a renewed DL... If not for the fact that I had good penmanship, black hair, was 5'8" and not her horrible penmanship, dishwater blonde hair and 5'2" height, it might have been harder to prove...

What a nightmare that was... I am to this day still haunted by crap she pulled years and years ago... She was still using my stuff as of a few years ago it seemed, she now lives somewhere in Clinton IL... I never did press charges, I didn't need another headache, just warned her if she did ever use it again I would have her butt put in jail... Had they not merged the married name from the IL divorce decree. I would never have realized it... I had the marriage annulled through the catholic church, but did not want my son to be considered illegitimate, so also received the legal divorce...

Kath

[Ben Sunday]

FWIW, in my state, they can put a hold on your drivers license or vehicle registration for unpaid tickets, unpaid property taxes, or failure to go through all of the emissions or safety tests with your car. Been that way for years.

Nothing to do with Homeland Security.

[Falls_Tech]

A friend of mine lived in MD decades ago. Now he's in OH. Last summer he went to renew his DL and they told him it had expired/revoked, what ever you call it. It stems from the Patriot Act and a problem he had 24 years ogo in MD. So he had to go to drivers training to get it reinstated. Last I talked to him he was driving every day with no license and no insurance. I would think he's got his license back by now but what a hassle. And I'll bet his insurance rates went up also.

[KuernoDeChivo]

Well you can see they can effectively shut you down when needed. Wait till they freeze the cashless $$ when you need to buy food or something.

The lovely NWO...

[Celtichooligan]

So....

[Ms. American]

Isn't there a statute of limitations for "crimes" (mishaps?) other than murder and armed robbery?

I saw a similar thing happen a year and a half a go to a woman who was driving through one of the western states and got pulled over. It seems that she had a 10 year old ticket...failure to stop at a stop sign...The original charge would have been a $10.00 fine, however they added penalties and revoked her licence for that state under the presumption that no other state would give her a drivers licence until she paid the old ticket.

Well, she'd had 2 driver's licences in two different states since that charge, and had just recently gotten one from a third state with out any problems.

However, when she got stopped in the state she was traveling through, the fines totaled up to over $600 when all was said and done. She had to travel 12 hours from the state she lived in to the state where she got pulled over, to attend court so that 600 doesn't even count the extra inconvenience costs.

She never even knew the ticket existed. Apparently, it was one of those take a picture of the plates, then mail the ticket sort of thing, and she'd LONG moved away, and never even received the ticket.

The moral of the story is..not all states keep good track of these things, and not all people who work the computers are very thorough in what they do. But either way, if you think you might have some old unattended business, it might be in your best interest to contact them, and get it cleared up before they find YOU. Course if you don't even know there's something out there, how can you do that?

It seems to me that there's a statute of limitations that's being violated and used to rake in a ton of $$$$

[GermanAxeman]

I went through this the year before last... Had to overnight police form's and all kinds of things to Springfield, IL and GA... My ex-husband's 15 year old girl friend at the time of our parting used my ID's to get a DL and a bunch of other things. She wasn't legally old enough to drink or go to bars... I was 21 at the time. She later married him two or three times I lost track, but she keep using my SS # and DL she had issued in IL... I had a FL DL until 10 years ago when I got the WI one. Had not had an IL one since I was 21. She cleared out an old IRA I had set up she had the paperwork (I left with nothing but my son and never looked back even for my things) and she forged my signature, got tickets all over the place on a DL with my name... When I divorced I went back to my maiden name legally, but they merged all of the married names on the computers in IL that year. SO her past came back to haunt me when I went to the WI DMV to renew my DL... The Courts in GA were really helpful, the Fed's wanted me to press charges to have her thrown in jail and all I wanted was a renewed DL... If not for the fact that I had good penmanship, black hair, was 5'8" and not her horrible penmanship, dishwater blonde hair and 5'2" height, it might have been harder to prove...

What a nightmare that was... I am to this day still haunted by crap she pulled years and years ago... She was still using my stuff as of a few years ago it seemed, she now lives somewhere in Clinton IL... I never did press charges, I didn't need another headache, just warned her if she did ever use it again I would have her butt put in jail... Had they not merged the married name from the IL divorce decree. I would never have realized it... I had the marriage annulled through the catholic church, but did not want my son to be considered illegitimate, so also received the legal divorce...

Kath

you are a very kind person. possibly to a fault. I would have pressed charges if I found this was done to me.

[Krayola]

From consumer advocate Clark Howard:
http://clarkhoward.com/liveweb/shownotes/2009/09/29/16758/
Traditional wisdom holds it that you should keep your tax returns for six years. But Clark has long advised people to hold onto them forever for as far back as possible.

Many states that are facing budget crunches are now seeking money from people they believe failed to file state taxes or grossly underpaid years ago. Imagine being hit with a request to produce your state tax return from 1983...or face a massive tax bill. The Chicago Tribune reports that's what happened to one taxpayer recently!

Clark himself has both state and federal tax returns on file going back to 1978. Don't stress out if you can't find all your returns beyond six years ago; just make sure to save all of them going forward.

Of course, a copy of a tax return doesn't necessarily mean that you filed. But there's a presumption of innocence if you can come up with it and the state is likely to back down.

Interestingly, this advice doesn't just apply to tax returns anymore. Any prior speeding tickets or parking tickets could also be called into question by local government. Save those receipts when you pay your tickets!

Something as benign as an unpaid parking ticket can actually result in the suspension of your license. That's because states are taking a federal law that was designed to keep habitual drunk drivers off the roads and re-purposing it to punish scofflaws. Congress passed this law for a good purpose, but it must be amended so that states can't abuse it to fill their tax coffers.

I remember listening to someone calling into the Clark Howard show a few years ago and he was having a problem where a state was claiming that he had an unpaid ticket from 10+ years back and the caller said he knew he had paid the fine but who keeps a copy of a traffic receipt for 10, 20 or even 30 years??!

I know the last time I got a ticket was in 1994 and I paid it. But if the state came back to me now and was holding my DL hostage I would not have any way to prove that I paid it. Clark Howard advises that any time you receive a ticket and you pay your fine, you need to save the documentation showing that you paid it because the state can look you up 30+ years later and claim that you never paid and you are out of luck because they consider you guilty unless you can prove otherwise. I think it is ridiculous and that there should be some kind of statute of limitations on when the state can collect because it is not fair to expect everyone to save paper documentation for 50 years. :evil: