Penalties for Driving Without Insurance in Montana
A first offense for driving uninsured in Montana carries a fine of $250 – $500. License or registration suspension: Registration on a second conviction, driver license on a fourth.
- First offense — fine
- $250 – $500
A fine of not less than $250 or more than $500, and — since July 1, 2017 — nothing else. House Bill 133 that year struck the words "or by imprisonment in the county jail for not more than 10 days, or both" from the first-offense sentence. Both of Montana's own consumer-facing descriptions still carry the deleted jail term: the Motor Vehicle Division's insurance FAQ says a first offense is "between $250 and $500 or up to 10 days in jail", and the Montana Driver Manual says the same. The statute says fine only.
- Subsequent offense — fine
- $350 – $500
Not a range in the ordinary sense — each step is a fixed amount. A second conviction is a fine of $350 flat, with no jail since July 1, 2017. A third or subsequent conviction is $500, or imprisonment in the county jail for not more than 10 days, or both. Under § 61-6-304(4) a prior conviction counts only if less than five years separates it from the present offense. Two state sources overstate this: the Motor Vehicle Division's FAQ says a third conviction can bring "imprisonment for not more than six months", which was the law until 2017, and the Driver Manual attaches 10 days of jail to a second offense, which the same 2017 act removed.
- License / registration suspension
- Registration on a second conviction, driver license on a fourth
The order matters and is unusual. On a second or subsequent conviction the sentencing court — not the department — orders the registration receipt and license plates surrendered for the vehicle driven at the time, if it belonged to the driver, an immediate family member, or someone who gave permission; the court reports the surrender and the department suspends the registration immediately. The plates are recycled or destroyed unless the court keeps them. A restricted registration receipt good only for getting to work can be bought back during the 90 days after a second conviction or the 180 days after a third or subsequent one, on proof of insurance plus the replacement plate and receipt fees. Only on a fourth or subsequent conviction does the court take the driver's license, and the department may not reinstate it until the registered owner provides proof of compliance with § 61-6-301. The Motor Vehicle Division's FAQ gets this backwards, telling readers a second offense means "your driver license will be revoked for 90 days" — the 90 days is the restricted-registration window, and the license is untouched until the fourth conviction.
- Vehicle impoundment
- Not authorized — what you lose is the plates
Nothing in part 3 of chapter 6 lets an officer seize or impound the vehicle for want of insurance. The sanction the statute reaches for instead is the registration: surrender of the receipt and plates by court order on a second or subsequent conviction, and suspension of the registration by the department when the court reports it.
- Annual surcharge
- None
Montana levies no annual surcharge or civil assessment for an insurance conviction. What the conviction does carry is 5 points under the habitual traffic offender schedule in § 61-11-203(2)(j) — "any of the mandatory motor vehicle liability protection offenses" — and 30 points inside three years makes you a habitual offender, which revokes the license for three years under § 61-11-211.
- SR-22 required afterwards
- No — only proof of current coverage
This is where Montana parts company with most states. A conviction for driving uninsured does not put you on a three-year certificate filing. Section 61-6-304(2) and (3) reinstate the registration and, on a fourth conviction, the license upon "proof of compliance with 61-6-301", which is a current policy meeting the § 61-6-103 limits — not a certificate filed by the insurer. The three-year filing in § 61-6-131 attaches to revocation, and no-insurance convictions do not revoke. The one indirect route is the points: six insurance convictions in three years reaches 30 points, and a habitual offender revocation does require the filing.
Montana sets $250 — higher than 17 of the 35 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $30 to $1,500.
How Montana compares with every other state
What it actually costs
A first offense runs $250 to $500, and where you land inside that band is the court's call. The fine is also rarely the expensive part.
Add what comes after the fine: $100 to be restored, the figure on the coverage lapse page. Those are the figures that decide what driving uninsured actually costs, and they are the ones left out of the headline penalty almost everywhere.
The part that stops you driving tomorrow is not the fine but the suspension: Registration on a second conviction, driver license on a fourth. Buying a policy the next morning is not the same as being restored — restoring the license or the registration is its own step, and the figures above are what it takes.
Every statute cited for Montana
What changed
October 1, 2025
The 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
Jail 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 bill
Why the rule looks like this
- What Changed in 2026Liability minimums doubled in Hawaii, two states dropped pure comparative fault, New Hampshire stopped inspecting cars, and three crash reporting thresholds moved — a dated account of the 2026 changes, and the ones already signed for 2027 and beyond.
- The Fine Is the Cheapest PartA first-offense fine for driving uninsured runs from $30 in Florida to a $1,500 floor in Delaware — but South Carolina's $100 fine arrives with a $700 reinstatement fee, and the reinstatement is usually the bigger number.
- When a State Contradicts ItselfA state's statute and that same state's own agency page often give different answers on the same day. Seven cases we hit reading all 51 jurisdictions, why it happens, and where the agency is the one that's right.
- What a Gap in Coverage Actually CostsA lapse is billed differently in every state — by the day in New York and Maryland, by the reinstatement in Florida, by a registration fee in Tennessee, by a $600 noncompliance fee in Virginia, and in Ohio by a fine that does not appear at all.
More on Montana
Checked against the primary sources above on September 29, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.