Maybe a stupid question, but...

[prosodic]

When you become a legal residence of one state, how do you lose your legal residence status in another? Lance and I were discussing this the other day. He's always been a legal resident of Minnesota, and the same goes for me of Ohio. But now that we're buying property in Washington state, we'll be legal residents there.

Of course, we'll be registering to vote in Kent, but not everyone who relocates is a registered voter. And we'll eventually be getting Washington drivers' licenses too, and certainly our cars will have Washington plates. And we'll both be employed in Washington.

However, I don't think most of these things will alert either Ohio or Minnesota to the fact that we aren't legal residents there anymore (although I would think that registering to vote should do it, but I'm not sure about this).

So, what say you, Live Journal people? I know many of you have relocated. What are we supposed to do, if anything?

Comments

[onelargecat.livejournal.com]

In my experience, each state sets its own rules for what constitutes residency. Living there for more than 30 days, starting a job there, plus a couple other things all count, in the state's eyes, as making you a resident (for tax purposes). For school residency purposes, each school is different, but I think the standard is you have to have lived in the area for at least one year before the date of enrollment to be able to qualify as in-state for tuition purposes.

For practical purposes, all I've ever had to change was my car's registration and license plates. I've never needed to "notify" my old state in any other way. In fact not even every state wants its license plates back...Massachusetts definitely wanted license plates back but that was the first time I'd encountered that.

Oh...useful link I just spotted!
http://access.wa.gov/living/resources/residency.aspx


I also found something saying that if you're active duty military (or spouse) that for tuition purposes you qualify for in-state tuition immediately, without the 12-month requirement.
http://www.washington.edu/students/reg/residency.html

[prosodic.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links! I thought of searching on google for this, but I wanted to get a feel for personal experiences with changing state of residence.

And I don't know when I'll actually start grad school, but I'm glad they'll consider me an in-state resident right away. That's reassuring.