Legal Question in Family Law in District of Columbia

Re: Stop - thief!

The issue of which spouse owns this vehicle and whose name should appear on the title should've been settled as part of the marital property division incident to the divorce.

However, in the unfortunate event that this never happened and both parties' names remain on the vehicle title, and you are unable to buy out your former wife's interest, then you're probably reduced to a kind of revolving "snatch and grab" scenario whereby each co-owner goes to the other's residence under the cover of darkness, of course, and removes the vehicle to his or her home turf and keeps and uses it as long as he or she can hang onto it until the other one comes to take it back, a scenario which could repeat indefinitely until some modicum of rationality emerges between the two disputants to finally settle ownership of this vehicle.

And it is worth bearing in mind that as long as your former spouse's name is on the title to the vehicle, she is as much a co-owner of it as you are and that that no criminal laws are broken nor involved in her taking this vehicle in the manner which you've described.

In other words, a strategy premised on Stop-thief!--

or an attempt on your part to invoke the criminal law to assist you with this matter will likely prove most unavailing.