Auto Insurance Claims: Accident, Insurance & Registration issue..., registration issue, release of liability form

Question
My husband & I purchased a vehicle from his boss back in Dec. 2008.  The vehicle is financed through our credit union & is therefore; the lienholder. Our credit union was supposed to have processed all of the paperwork for the loan, including any DMV forms in order to register us as the new owners.  After a month or so of not receiving our new registration card from the DMV, I called both our credit union & the DMV to find out what the delay was.  The DMV blamed the credit union & vice versa.  Finally, after about 2 months or so (after purchasing the vehicle), I finally spoke to a rep from DMV who stated that we still owed more money for fees relating to registering the vehicle.  I immediately called the credit union & they, apologetically, fixed the issue of withdrawing more money from our account to pay for the balance of registration fees.  Shortly thereafter, we received our registration card.  The conundrum that I am now facing is that I was involved in an accident on 3/24/09.  The accident was deemed my fault.  The other party has consulted with an attorney & most recently was waiting on my insurance company to run the plates (on my vehicle) to find out who the registered owner was at the time of the accident.  According to the registration history report, it was finally put in our name on 3/27/09 (3 days after the accident).  We know for certain that my husband's boss, whom we bought the vehicle from, turned in the "release of liability" form to the DMV shortly after the transaction took place.  My question is, by law, are we considered the registered owners of this vehicle if the registration was not put in our names until 3 days after the accident?  How does this affect our claim, if anything? Our insurance company is in the process of forwarding this information to the other party's attorney.  According to my insurance rep handling the claim, he has never encountered this issue before & doesn't really know what this means.  Can you help me understand this?

Answer
Hi Jen,

Although it may take several days for everyone at your insurance company to verify everything, this should have no affect on your claim. If there is an issue you would simply need to get documentation from your credit union indicating that the confusion was due to a clerical error. You purchased the insurance and covered the vehicle. The only issue is who is coveered and when. The paper trail should straighten everything out.

I hope this helps
Richard Hixenbaugh