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Old 05-11-2022, 09:27 AM   #1
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Tennessee as domicile

Hi there! We are proud Tennesseans about to close on our house and hit the road full time for the next 3-5 years. After we get the travel bug out of our systems we plan to come home to Tennessee to settle back down.

It is very important to us that we keep TN as our domicile so that we can continue to vote as Tennesseans.

We are thinking that we can use my sister-in-law's address as our address for tax, license, voting purposes and use a TN digital mail service so that she does not have to deal with our mail.

Am I understanding this correctly?
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Old 05-11-2022, 10:18 AM   #2
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Hi, My wife and I are also starting full time life. We use our Daughters address in Chattanooga for our address. For us at this time it works out well. We are interested in Escapee's but want our permanent address to remain in Tennessee. Only reason for us to move our mail to escapee's would be to take the mail load off our daughter. Make sure you look into fulltime insurance. There are not many companies offering it. We will be heading North on 6/7.
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Old 05-11-2022, 02:31 PM   #3
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Even though you want to stay in TN here are a couple good articles from the Escapees web site:

https://escapees.com/establishing-domicile-for-rvers/

https://escapees.com/popular-domicil...-south-dakota/

I guess I'm not understanding your desire to have a TN just to vote. You can vote in the national elections with any address. For local voting it's recommended that you actually live there so you know the candidates and issues.

Medical insurance is a big thing to study. Will your insurance travel with you?
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Old 05-11-2022, 06:24 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by twogypsies View Post
Even though you want to stay in TN here are a couple good articles from the Escapees web site:

https://escapees.com/establishing-domicile-for-rvers/

https://escapees.com/popular-domicil...-south-dakota/

I guess I'm not understanding your desire to have a TN just to vote. You can vote in the national elections with any address. For local voting it's recommended that you actually live there so you know the candidates and issues.

Medical insurance is a big thing to study. Will your insurance travel with you?

It is important to us to vote for our state legislators. We will return to TN and having a say in who is running our state matters to us. And while we might not live in the local community our family members do and we are aware of the candidates and the issues.

We are fine on medical insurance, we have a Federal Employees Plan from my husband's career, it is good everywhere.

I know not everyone will understand our commitment to our home state.
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Old 05-12-2022, 04:31 AM   #5
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There ya go.
You just answered your own question.
Stay in TN.
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Old 05-12-2022, 06:27 AM   #6
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Would it be a huge issue having your family take care of your mail? We have 100% of our income set up on direct deposit and most of our bills on auto pay. We have everything on "paperless" billing so we get very little mail. What mail we do get can be monitored because we are signed up for USPS Informed Delivery (you simply check online to see what pieces of mail you are getting each day). There are certain things now the then that we may want a copy of so our friend will snap an iphone pic of them and send it along. I can simply print it off.

As far as birthday cards or other things we actually might want while we are traveling, it is easy to have our friend simply stuff them into a mailer and send them to us every couple of months. We leave her the mailers and some mail money.

This setup has worked great for us since beginning our adventure in 2011.
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Old 05-12-2022, 09:06 AM   #7
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There ya go.
You just answered your own question.
Stay in TN.
Can you clarify what you are advising here? Do you mean that we should, and can, have the state of our choice as a domicile or are you advising that we not physically leave the state?

We are experienced rvers but the issues that go with being houseless and full time travelers are new to us. I'm not trying to be dense, just wanting to make sure I understand you.
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Old 05-12-2022, 09:09 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by Phillieagle View Post
Hi, My wife and I are also starting full time life. We use our Daughters address in Chattanooga for our address. For us at this time it works out well. We are interested in Escapee's but want our permanent address to remain in Tennessee. Only reason for us to move our mail to escapee's would be to take the mail load off our daughter. Make sure you look into fulltime insurance. There are not many companies offering it. We will be heading North on 6/7.
Thanks! This is encouraging, I'm glad to see someone else who wants to keep the Volunteer State as "home" even when roaming! I should probably join Escapees again, we were members when we first started rving but as part timers it did not seem like we needed much of what they offer, all that is changing now!
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Old 05-12-2022, 09:13 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by FLJOE View Post
Would it be a huge issue having your family take care of your mail? We have 100% of our income set up on direct deposit and most of our bills on auto pay. We have everything on "paperless" billing so we get very little mail. What mail we do get can be monitored because we are signed up for USPS Informed Delivery (you simply check online to see what pieces of mail you are getting each day). There are certain things now the then that we may want a copy of so our friend will snap an iphone pic of them and send it along. I can simply print it off.

As far as birthday cards or other things we actually might want while we are traveling, it is easy to have our friend simply stuff them into a mailer and send them to us every couple of months. We leave her the mailers and some mail money.

This setup has worked great for us since beginning our adventure in 2011.
I think we do want a separate mail service, we don't want to burden any of our family with monitoring mail. When we were on long trips (usually 4-16 weeks at a time) our kids monitored the mail and of course we have been using the USPS informed delivery service for several years. But since we sold the house and kicked out our kids (joking, sort of) we don't have that built in service anymore. We do not want to use any of them for an address because they are all going to apartments and are not likely to be settled more than a year at a time. After much consideration we don't mind paying for a mail service at all. Now we just have to choose which one will be best for us.
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Old 05-12-2022, 10:27 AM   #10
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If I remember Tenn. is one of the states that do not tax the retirement income. That was one reason we changed our residency to South Dakota last year.

But as far as mail, the first 2 years we used UPS store. We got a mailbox there and when we called, they forward the mail to our location. The one issue we had with the delivery was we had it sent to General Delivery to a local Post Office. When we went to pick it up, then we were informed they do not accept packages from UPS, FEDEX. So, they returned it to UPS.
Thing is that wife did call, and the Post Office gave her the address to send it. But the other part was it was a substitute employee that did not know that branch did not accept the packages. Branch manager said sorry she did not know, since "we are such a small branch".

The issue we had with Ohio was after we sold our home, they would not allow us to use the UPS store to register to vote, since it was a business address. Ohio just wanted us to give a campground address to vote in 2020.
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Old 05-12-2022, 10:45 AM   #11
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I suggest you contact your county "Election Commission." Contact info will be on your county website. You don't want to inadvertently commit !!!ELECTION FRAUD!!! Seriously, there is little incentive to vote in TN, it's about as homogeneous as it gets. Your neighbors will all vote just like you.
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Old 05-12-2022, 01:23 PM   #12
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Keep your TN residence. It is much easier to keep than to reestablish.

Get a box at a UPS store in TN. Your residence can be your SIL's house and your mailing address can be the UPS store address and box number. All of the various departments in TN allow a separate physical vs mailing address. We pay $40 a month for a big box at the UPS store. They will box all your mail up and ship it wherever you want.

Her address will be on your driver's license and that will be where you vote. It is not voter fraud.

We do this with no issues. The only difference is that our physical address is the marina where we slip our houseboat.
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Old 05-16-2022, 07:57 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KelliApp View Post
Hi there! We are proud Tennesseans about to close on our house and hit the road full time for the next 3-5 years. After we get the travel bug out of our systems we plan to come home to Tennessee to settle back down.

It is very important to us that we keep TN as our domicile so that we can continue to vote as Tennesseans.

We are thinking that we can use my sister-in-law's address as our address for tax, license, voting purposes and use a TN digital mail service so that she does not have to deal with our mail.

Am I understanding this correctly?
So we just went through this ourselves as longtime TN residents. I'm one to dig deep, so after many conflicting answers from blogs, and local officials, I went to Nashville and below is the answer I received. Hope this helps and please feel free to reach out if any questions.

By the way, we have no relatives in TN so we ended up doing Escapees in TX.

We would like to assist you any way possible within state law and our promulgated rules. Unfortunately, 3rd party mail companies cannot be used as a residential address for a Tennessee license. Tennessee defines residency as "a person's true, fixed, and permanent state of residence." Perhaps you have a family member or friend that would be willing to use their address as your "fixed location", but still use the 3rd party mail company as your mailing address.



Edwin M. Mimms
Compliance Officer
Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security
Driver Services Division
1150 Foster Avenue
Nashville TN 37243
Phone: 615-251-5239
Facsimile: 615-253-2092
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Old 05-17-2022, 02:07 PM   #14
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Keep your TN residence. It is much easier to keep than to reestablish.

Get a box at a UPS store in TN. Your residence can be your SIL's house and your mailing address can be the UPS store address and box number. All of the various departments in TN allow a separate physical vs mailing address. We pay $40 a month for a big box at the UPS store. They will box all your mail up and ship it wherever you want.

Her address will be on your driver's license and that will be where you vote. It is not voter fraud.

We do this with no issues. The only difference is that our physical address is the marina where we slip our houseboat.
This is what we have landed on doing, except we went with Anytime Mailbox instead of the UPS store. When it is time to renew licenses and plates we will use my sister-in-law as our physical address, and its not dishonest as we have a gravel spot behind their workshop where we will stay in our motorhome when we are home!
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