Hi Everyone. Well, after 15 years the RV-Dreams Community Forum is coming to an end. Since it began in August 2005, we've had 58 Million page views, 124,000 posts, and we've spent about $15,000 to keep this valuable resource for RVers free and open. But since we are now off the road and have settled down for the next chapter of our lives, we are taking the Forum down effective June 30, 2021. It has been a tough decision, but it is now time.
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Almost ready to full time! Doing research on establishing domicile and have a question I haven't seen addressed. We live in Ohio and for health insurance reasons we would like to at least for now retain Ohio domicile. After sale of house, if we use daughter's address in Indiana for mail delivery, would that make us domiciled in Indiana? This would greatly increase our costs of vehicle registration, something we do not wish to do. Is there a mail service in Ohio we could use? Thanks.
I can't help you with questions about Ohio, but there is a wealth of good information regarding establishing domicile on the Escapees web site - much of it put together by an attorney. There was also a good article in a recent Escapees Magazine on the topic. In general, it can get complicated unless you go about it carefully and you can end up with a "former" state coming after you for taxes, etc. There are reasons that Texas, Florida, and South Dakota are the front-runners for domicile for full-time RVers. In my opinion, if you are determined to retain Ohio as your domicile, you would do well to consult an attorney.
I would be interested to hear Howard's opinion on this if he comes across this thread...
Rob
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2012 F350 DRW Lariat 6.7
PullRite OE 18K, Demco Glide Ride pinbox
2020 Solitude 310GK-R, MORryde IS, disc brakes, solar, DP windows
Well, the short answer is you can have an address in Indiana and keep an Ohio domicile. But it's a little trickier than that.
It would be better to have a mailing address in Ohio, but I don't know of any mail forwarding service I would recommend. The Family Motor Coach Association's mail forwarding service used to be in Cincinnati, but that ended in September 2014 and now they use a service in South Dakota.
You might try a UPS store in Ohio and get a private mail box (PMB) there. We know folks that use UPS Stores for receiving mail and mail forwarding, but the level of service tends to vary quite a bit from store to store. Most are franchises, so it often depends on the individual owner as to how far they are willing to go and whether they will go above and beyond the normal UPS Store guidelines/procedures.
Although the UPS store will give you a street address, "PMB ____" is usually part of the address and some insurance companies and lenders balk at addresses with "PMB" as they know it's just a glorified post office box. Many states require a "real" street address for vehicle registrations and/or driver's licenses, so a P.O. Box or PMB may not suffice (don't know about Ohio, specifically) - some get around that by "fudging" the address a little (not including P.O. Box or PMB as part of the address for the purposes where it is not allowed).
IF you decide to go with a mailing address in Indiana, that address alone won't make you an Indiana domicile. But if you keep your voter registration, vehicle registration, driver's licenses, insurances, etc. in Ohio, then you will still need an Ohio address for all of those things. Therefore, in my opinion, it would be better to go ahead and figure out a way to get and keep an Ohio mailing address.
There are commercial mail forwarding services in Ohio (other than UPS Stores), but unless they specifically advertise that they work with full-time RVers, they would make me nervous unless I had some other RVer references.
In Michigan, it was impossible to "fudge" an address. We started fulltiming using a UPS address. Always used either # sign or Apt # but the DMV knew the address was a commercial one and they wrote to us rescinding our drivers licenses until we gave them a residential address.
Not a fun time. We had to "move in" with our ex next door neighbors until we could make the move to Texas.
Having a mail forwarding address in another state has nothing to do with your domicile.
You will need an address in Ohio for your drivers licence, vehicle registration, voters registration and so forth though.
We "rented" a room in our daughter's house in NH for a while when we first started full timing, but our mail went to a mail forwarding service in SD. That worked for all of the state and federal requirements. That also allowed us to get renters insurance for the stuff we had stored in a storage facility.
Then we stopped by SD and got everything changed over.
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Clay (WA5NMR), Lee (wife), Katie, Kelli (cats) Full timed for eleven years in a 2004 Sightseer 35N. Snowbirds for one winter and now settled down in CO.
