Maintaining Residency

[mikegourley]

We live in Virginia and hope to rent our home and travel in our motor home for two years using a mail service based in Florida, but we are not sure what we have to do to be able to vote and keep our Virginia conceal carry permits. We want to maintain our Virginia residency, but are not sure what we need to do.

[thrushl]

We live in Virginia and hope to rent our home and travel in our motor home for two years using a mail service based in Florida, but we are not sure what we have to do to be able to vote and keep our Virginia conceal carry permits. We want to maintain our Virginia residency, but are not sure what we need to do.

Well, first let me start with two points:

1. I AM NOT AN EXPERT and only tell you what we did.

2. I'm not exactly sure "why" you want to maintain VA (personal property tax on your rig, lower insurance rates, etc), but that is YOUR decision and not mine for sure.

Simply put, do nothing... You still own the house and unless you do something to establish residency somewhere else, you plan to return to VA, and don't stay so long in one of the states that require you to get their tags, license, etc. - You should have no issue.

My wife is STILL a VA resident and has her VA CCW, but I went to SD, got driver's license, tags, title, and YES CCW. Now, insurance is 40% less than VA, tags are less, and I do not have to pay VA personal property tax of $520.00 per month. I understand that if you are lucky enough to be in the one or two counties that do not tax RVs that may not make a difference, but to us it did.

JUST my two cents.

[ClayL]

The problem is that owning a house does not mean you are a resident if you don't live in it and have it rented so the address can't be used by you . You can own houses all over the country and not be resident of any of the states they are located in.

You are right to be concerned. Many states require you to keep the address on your drivers licenses current and you don't have one in VA.

The issue will be the address used on your drivers licences and for your vehicle registrations. Many (most?) states will not allow you to use a mail forwarding service street address for that purpose and you are using a Florida mail service so even if they did allow a mail forwarding service you have a

problem.

This is why most full timers use one of the three states that are friendly to them and allow the use of a mail forwarding service address. The three states most used are SD, TX, and FL.

If you have relatives in VA you may be able to use their address.

[gbrinck]

You pretty much remain a legal resident unless you take several specific steps to sever that relationship and establish residency elsewhere. So you remain a VA resident by default, especially if you keep the RV registered/titled there and pay VA taxes. But being considered a "resident" doesn't automatically guarantee your CC permit remains valid - there may be specific rules about a fixed address, local police validation, or whatever. Check with the carry permit licensing authority. Likewise, voting laws may have their own speciic requirements, e.g. a residence address in the district you will be voting in. Since you will rent out your home, what will you use for a Virginia residence address on legal documents? Some docs may only need a mailing address for contact purposed and that can (usually) be anywhere, but others will require a legal address. Sometimes a PO box or mail-handling facility will be accepted, but often not. For example, a driver license usually requires a "real" address. Check with the DMV on alternatives for that.

[luckydog1949]

We use a UPS Store mailbox for our address; and, we *still* had to give the registrar of voters the address of the RV park we stay at while we're at our home base in order to vote (in Louisiana.) But, that is because we moved into this part of Louisiana after selling our home (which was nearer the coast) and had to change our drivers' licenses. If you already have a physical address that you've used for a long time, just change your mailing address to the UPS Store box (PMB - Personal Mail Box.) The Patriot Act threw a huge monkey wrench into the full timer lifestyle where addresses are concerned. It did take a while to get the DMV to allow us to use the UPS Store address on our licenses, though (and on our CCW - (CHP in LA.)) The UPS Store is at least as good as any other mail forwarding service and will send your mail wherever you tell them to... for a fee, of course.) The store we use will actually go over the mail pieces with us and shred whatever we don't want them to send to us. If they are busy when we call they call us back after the rush ends. I'm not sure all stores will do this, though.

[jrwitt]

Just curious ... what does the RV park do if they receive mail for you from the registrar if you are not there? Do they hold it for you or return it? Or perhaps send to your UPS address? I have often wondered how to deal with voter's registration if I went on the road fulltime.

[hermanmullins]

Just my 2 cents. What would happen if you have an address where you have a family member living. They forward your mail to you when they know where you will be. You get that wonderful "Jury Duty Summons" 3 weeks after you were supposed to be in court. Contempt of Court I believe is the term.

Herman

[tbutler]

I suggest that you talk to a lawyer. The easy solution is to move your legal residence to where your mailing service is, Florida. If you can't find a mailing service in Virginia and you want to stay there for your residence, you are muddying up all kinds of things. Because of increased security measures, driver's licenses must be connected to a physical address. Some mailing services can do this for you, others can't. Many people get by without being completely legal but if something happens they are in a real bind. If the address on your gun permit does not match your mailing, legal or physical address and someone checks on this, you have a problem. If the address on your driver's license doesn't match your mailing, legal or physical address, more problems.

When we went full time we "moved" to South Dakota. It was our mailing address, our legal address (we went to a lawyer to discuss) and the mailing service was a physical address (not a PO Box). Our vehicles were licensed there, our driver's licenses were there, we voted there and we had our wills, health directives and estate papers redone there. There were still occasions when I had to take extra time with issues to resolve them, even with all these things in alignment. At one point I had to go to the FAA to resolve an issue. They wouldn't accept the mailing service address (with a PMB) as my legal address. It took several back and forth messages to resolve this but they finally understood my situation and accepted the address. There were several agencies and businesses that would flag the mailing service address as a commercial address and refuse to accept it as my personal mailing address. Toward the end of our full time adventures, I was seeing less of this. Generally you are dealing with people who have little or no experience with the vagabond lifestyle of a full timer. It doesn't fit their pre-conceived notions of how things should work. You have to be patient with them and carefully explain your situation.

Regarding voting, we voted in South Dakota. We only voted in national and state level elections, not local elections. We were subject to jury duty but when called, and we did get called, they excused us. That was the practice in that county. They had almost as many full time RV'ers as residents as they had physical residents. They were glad to have us, we increased their tax base and their population numbers without all the demands that physical residents make on their services and resources. So they made concessions for us. That is one of the nice things about using South Dakota as a legal residence for full timing. It is a small population state and a few thousand RV'ers can make an impact on the local level. Even at the county court house and the driver's license office they were well aware of full timers.

[BearAndMoon]

Just curious ... what does the RV park do if they receive mail for you from the registrar if you are not there? Do they hold it for you or return it? Or perhaps send to your UPS address? I have often wondered how to deal with voter's registration if I went on the road fulltime.

We're in on the road for 6 months out of the year. Our park, here in Oregon holds our space, maintains it, provides security for the Tough Shed that comes with our space (we use it for storage and a small shop), and picks up our mail. They will forward anything that is official, to whatever address we specify. Our youngest will come by once a week to pick up everything else. We pay less than $100.00 a month for the services, and we maintain our Oregon residency.

Well worth the money in my opinion.....