Co-Sharing a Car With Partner

[ObieGrad]

My partner and I have lived together for several years and have been sharing her car for this period of time.  Her car is now in need of replacement and we are looking to buy a new one with financing.  I am trying to decide the best way to approach this purchase process.

We both have exceptionally good credit and already have a joint auto insurance policy.

Assuming both my individual credit and income and our joint credit and income are adequate, which is the best way to handle it?

1. Buy the car and finance and my name.

2. Buy the car jointly and finance in my name.

3. Buy the car jointly and finance jointly.

I am leaning towards option 2 and then having a joint ownership agreement with her making monthly payments to me, but does this ever create problems with auto loans?  What are potential advantages to joint financing instead of a just one person financing.

[Remember0]

I really don't recommend joint on any loan unless one person's credit or income can't support it. I can't think of any advantages to be honest. But joint will get messy real fast if you guys ever decide to split up sometime down the road. By the way, you can't have a joint title and only you loan. If joint title, it's going to be joint loan. No finance company will agree to do what you propose because what are they supposed to do if you stop paying? Repo half the car or pay half the auction proceeds to your partner?

I do understand in some cases with a valuable asset and a stable partner, some people prefer to jointly own though. Just be careful with joint and each of you needs to make sure you're okay paying off the loan if the other doesn't even when the other person (who isn't paying) takes/hides the vehicle.

[redshift1]

Question for a  attorney as laws differ from state to state. 

[Remember0]

Paying an attorney over a 20k car seems a little ridiculous to me.

My opinion: One person's name on both car and loan. Other person can pay "rent" for the # of months of payments. Obviously half isn't fair (they lose access if you break up). But do something like cake splitting. One person proposes a fair term aka one person buys, the other contributes 15 (or say 20)% of the monthly payments for the term of the loan to share in the depreciation. The other person gets to choose whether car is in their name or if they want to pay the 15-20%.

Honestly, what feels fair to me is splitting the depreciation+maintainence+gas hit on the car 50-50 (only do the depreciation for say 3 or 5 years). The person who owns the car is solely responsible for any amounts of loan pay off below depreciation. If that happened to me with a partner and we eventually split, I'd have no qualms about having split the depreciation 50-50 because I used the car 50-50 when we were together. Nor would I feel any entitlement to the car...

[redshift1]

Some good points as usual but  i'd rather know upfront about the legal implications when things head south. Plan for worst hope for the best.