I am about to buy a car to share with my son but am worried by the other posts on this forum.  Currently I share with my wife (policy in my name) but she needs it more than I do now so will be transferring ownership to her & she will be the main driver.  I am getting another car for me/my son but I am the owner/bill payer - partly to help him learn and once passed for him to use getting to school some of the time.  He will share schoool runs with a couple of other people so will drive to school possibly 3 to 5 days one week, but maybe not drive at all the next week.  I will have first call on the car but as I work locally I intend to be walking to work a few days each week as I currently do now.

 My worry is if he has an accident after he has passed his test, what stops my insurance company refusing to pay out saying I have "fronted" him?  Who has to prove what if they refuse to pay out - seems like an easy way out for the insurers.

Hi there. Good question. Although the DVLA document makes it clear that being a registered keeper is not the same as being the legal owner, if you ARE the registered keeper of the car and it is clear from things like receipts (petrol, MOT, services etc) that you are paying all the bills associated with the car, I don't think you will have any problem.

I would recommend that you do keep those receipts if you can, including road tax and so on just to be on the safe side.

Hope this helps...

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Community

I think your best course of action would be to call the insurer and
inform them exactly how the car will be used and check that it is
acceptable to them for you to be listed as main driver.

Then if it is OK - take the adviser's name and the time of the call as backup.

I really don't think it would be a good idea to have a crib list on this forum to aid potential fraudsters. 

Fair point, thanks for the advise (both replies).

I guess I'll get on the phone after researching the best online quote - I hope they honour the purported "online discount" that many sites say they offer.