Form Guide · California · REG 138

REG 138 — the filing that takes your name off the car.

Last updated July 28, 2026

REG 138 is the California DMV's Notice of Transfer and Release of Liability. If you just sold a car in California, this is the filing that ends your legal responsibility for what the new owner does with it before they put the registration in their own name.

We do not generate REG 138. You file it yourself, directly with the DMV, free, online, in about three minutes — nobody should charge you for it and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we make is the other half of the paperwork: REG 135, the bill of sale that sits alongside it and holds every fact the REG 138 form asks you for.

What REG 138 does, in plain English

The moment you hand over the keys, the DMV database still shows you as the registered owner. It keeps showing you until the buyer completes the title transfer at a DMV office — and California gives the buyer 10 days to do that. Some buyers take all ten. Some take three months. Some never bother.

During that gap, anything the vehicle does comes back to the name on the record. REG 138 closes the gap from your side: it tells the DMV "I sold this vehicle, on this date, to this person", and the state notes the release against the record. It does not transfer title — only the buyer's registration does that — but it is what gets your liability off the car.

The 5-day clock

California law requires the seller to file REG 138 within 5 calendar days of the sale. Calendar days, not business days — a Friday sale means the following Wednesday.

In practice, file it the same day you hand over the keys. There is no reason to wait, the filing is free, and the one thing a late filing cannot do is retroactively cover the days you left open.

What skipping it actually costs you

Every one of these is addressed to the registered owner, not the driver:

Parking tickets — written against the plate and mailed to whoever the DMV says owns it.
Bridge tolls and toll-lane violations (FasTrak) — these escalate with penalties and can end up as a collections matter in your name.
Red-light and speed-camera citations — same mechanism, same mailbox.
Civil claims arising from a crash. If the buyer hits someone before registering, your name is still on the vehicle when the attorney pulls the record.
Renewal notices and registration holds for a car you no longer own.

None of this is exotic. It is the single most common way a clean California private sale turns into a six-month headache, and it is prevented by a free three-minute form.

How to file it — online at dmv.ca.gov

The DMV takes REG 138 through its Notice of Transfer and Release of Liability portal. It is free, there is no DMV appointment, and you get an emailed confirmation when it goes through.

Save that confirmation. Put it in a folder with a copy of the signed REG 135 and a photo of the signed title. That packet is what you produce when a citation with your name on it turns up two months later, and it ends the conversation immediately.

What information you need to file

Have this in front of you before you start:

Vehicle identification number (VIN) — 17 characters
California license plate number
Date of sale — the exact date, which should match your bill of sale
Buyer's full legal name
Buyer's address — street, city, state, ZIP
Sale price

Every one of those fields is already on the REG 135 our California wizard produces. If you filled one out at the handoff, filing REG 138 is copying six things off a PDF — not digging through text messages trying to reconstruct the buyer's address.

REG 138 is not REG 135 — you want both

These get confused constantly, and the distinction is simple once you see it:

REG 135 documents the sale. It is the bill of sale — a one-page record signed by both parties showing who sold what to whom, for how much, on what date, at what odometer reading. It lives in your files and in the buyer's.
REG 138 notifies the state. Nobody signs it with you. It is a one-way message to the DMV that updates their record.

They do different jobs and neither substitutes for the other. A bill of sale does not update the DMV database, so REG 135 alone leaves you exposed. And REG 138 captures nothing about condition, payment, or as-is terms, so it is no help at all if the buyer calls in three weeks about the transmission. File REG 138 for the state; keep REG 135 for yourself.

Do not cancel your insurance first

File REG 138, wait for the confirmation, then call your insurer to cancel the policy on the sold car and ask for the pro-rated refund. Cancelling before you file is the worst of both worlds — you are still the registered owner on DMV records, and now the car is uninsured while a stranger drives it.

Frequently asked

Does REG 138 need to be notarized?

No. California does not require notarization of REG 138, REG 135, or the pink slip.

Is there a fee?

No. REG 138 is free to file, online or otherwise. If a site is charging you to submit it, close the tab.

What if I already missed the 5 days?

File it as soon as you realise. The sooner the release is on record, the sooner your exposure stops. What a late filing cannot do is undo anything that accrued in the gap — which is exactly why the same-day filing is worth the three minutes.

Does REG 138 transfer the title?

No. Title transfer happens when the buyer registers the vehicle in their own name, and California gives them 10 days from the date of sale to do it. REG 138 and the buyer's transfer are independent filings — if you filed within your 5-day window, the buyer running late does not undo your release.

The buyer is out of state. Do I still file?

Yes. The vehicle is on California records and your name is on it. File REG 138 the same as any other sale; the buyer takes the signed title and their copy of the REG 135 to their home-state DMV.

Where do I get a copy of the vehicle's details if I no longer have the car?

Your bill of sale. That is the point of writing one before the car leaves — the VIN, plate, odometer reading, buyer's name and address, and sale price are all on it, in one place, signed.

What we do handle — the REG 135 half

Our California wizard is four steps on your phone:

VIN auto-decoded through the free NHTSA vPIC API — year, make, model and body class fill themselves in.
The official REG 135 filled from the DMV template, positioned so a county clerk recognises it on sight.
The federal odometer disclosure required by 49 CFR § 580 for any vehicle model year 2011 or newer.
An as-is condition addendum — the part REG 135 leaves out, where you list known defects and the buyer signs that they saw them.
Both signatures captured on the phone (valid under the federal E-SIGN Act), emailed to both parties as a finished PDF.

$9.99 one-time. No subscription, no account. Start the California wizard.

Bottom line

REG 138 is the most important thing a California seller does after the handshake, and it costs nothing but three minutes. File it at dmv.ca.gov the day of the sale, save the confirmation email, and keep it with your bill of sale. Need the bill of sale too? Start the California wizard — $9.99, emailed to both parties, with every field REG 138 asks for already on the page.