What changed in Montana
Insurance law does not sit still, but most guides are written once and left alone. Repealed programs and retired forms keep circulating for years. This is what actually changed inMontana, when, and where to verify it.
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October 1, 2025
Driving uninsuredThe 2025 session rewrote wording in the mandatory insurance sections but changed no duty, penalty or limit
Montana's legislature holds a regular session only in odd-numbered years, so the 69th Legislature of 2025 was the most recent opportunity for anything here to move. Two of its acts reached into the mandatory insurance sections, and both were housekeeping. House Bill 43 (Chapter 23, Laws 2025), by request of the Transportation Interim Committee, revised traffic regulation laws for consistency and clarity; its Section 2 amended § 61-6-301 to point the phrase "ways of this state open to the public" at the relocated definition in § 61-8-102 instead of § 61-8-101, leaving the insurance duty otherwise word for word. House Bill 99 (Chapter 47, Laws 2025) reorganized motor vehicle definitions for readability, amending § 61-6-102 and § 61-6-302 among dozens of sections and repealing §§ 61-9-513, 61-9-514 and 61-9-519 as duplicative penalty provisions. Nothing in either act altered what a Montana driver must carry, produce or pay. Neither bill prescribed its own effective date, so under § 1-2-201(1)(a) both took effect October 1, 2025. Worth stating plainly because the dates invite the opposite inference: the minimum limits in § 61-6-103 were last amended in 2015, the penalties in § 61-6-304 in 2017, and the verification system in § 61-6-157 in 2019. The next regular session is in 2027.
House Bill 43 (2025), Chapter 23, Laws of Montana 2025 — enrolled billJuly 1, 2017
Driving uninsuredJail was removed from first and second no-insurance offenses, and cut from six months to ten days on a third
House Bill 133 of the 2017 session (Chapter 321, Laws 2017, effective July 1, 2017 and applicable to offenses committed after June 30, 2017) rewrote the penalty sentence in Mont. Code Ann. § 61-6-304(1) as part of the Commission on Sentencing's omnibus revision of Montana sentencing law. The enrolled act struck the words "or by imprisonment in the county jail for not more than 10 days, or both" from the first-offense penalty and again from the second-conviction penalty, and replaced "6 months" with "10 days" in the third-or-subsequent penalty. A first offense is now a fine of $250 to $500 and nothing more; a second is a flat $350; only a third or subsequent conviction can carry jail, and then for no more than ten days. The same act also fixed § 61-6-302(4), changing the test for an acquittal from insurance "valid at the time of arrest" to insurance "valid at the time the alleged violation took place". Nine years on, Montana's own consumer materials still describe the repealed rule. The Motor Vehicle Division's Vehicle Insurance and Verification page tells drivers a first offense is "between $250 and $500 or up to 10 days in jail" and that a third conviction can bring "imprisonment for not more than six months"; the Montana Driver Manual attaches ten days of jail to a first and a second offense. Both are reciting the pre-2017 text. The chapter number and section numbers of the amendment are on the face of the current statute; the struck and inserted words were read in the enrolled bill.
Mont. Code Ann. § 61-6-304 — penalties (history: amd. Sec. 35, Ch. 321, L. 2017), with House Bill 133 (2017) enrolled billJanuary 1, 2016
Minimum coverageThe property damage minimum doubled from $10,000 to $20,000
House Bill 375 of the 2015 session (Chapter 216, Laws 2015), introduced by Representative S. Lavin, amended Mont. Code Ann. § 61-6-103(1)(b)(iii) to strike $10,000 and insert $20,000, and its applicability section limits the change to "motor vehicle insurance liability policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2016." The $10,000 figure had stood since 1989. The two bodily injury figures were left untouched and still read $25,000 and $50,000, where the legislature set them in 1975. This is the single most common stale fact about Montana insurance: guides that still print "25/50/10" are describing the pre-2016 rule. The change also quietly lifted the uninsured motorist floor's companion figure, because § 33-23-201 ties uninsured motorist limits to § 61-6-103. The Legislative Services Division's topic primer records the bill and confirms the current $20,000 figure; the applicability date was read in the enrolled bill.
Montana Legislative Services Division — Topic Primer: Revise Auto Insurance Minimum Requirements (HB 375, 2015), with House Bill 375 (2015) enrolled bill
What this list does and does not cover
Recorded here: changes to the rules this site tracks for Montana — liability minimums, SR-22 and proof-of-insurance requirements, penalties for driving uninsured, the fault system, what a lapse costs, new-resident deadlines and crash reporting. Each entry names the session law or statute that made the change and the date it took effect, not the date it was signed.
Not recorded: rate filings, individual insurer decisions, court rulings that do not change the text of the law, and changes to rules outside those seven subjects. A short list does not mean a quiet legislature — it means little moved in the parts of Montana law a driver has to comply with.
A change that has passed but has not yet taken effect is not shown as current anywhere on this site. It sits on the Montana pages as a dated pending value and replaces the current figure on the morning it comes into force. You can see every pending change across the country at the top of the national change feed, and the sources behind the Montana figures on its statute index.